After dinner, Dutrex, Durupt, and I went for a walk. There was a high wind as we strolled along the parapets. In shady corners, I was able to pluck some dwarf gentians, mosses, and lichens. I even discovered a tuft of dwarf heather from which the flowers had almost all fallen. I have arranged this posy in my campaigner’s mug. There it is, beside your portrait. If only we could hope to get away from here before it fades!
Durupt left us to attend vespers, whilst I went on walking with Dutrex. At ordinary times he is a man of extreme reserve, fencing off his intimate soul, and all the more unapproachable in proportion as he becomes gayer; but to-day, as if in spite of himself, he was a little expansive.
There had been a silence, and then he said:
“Just at this hour, coming from his office, my father has doubtless been greeted by the words, ‘Still no news of the little one?’ I’m afraid I shall find them greatly aged.”
“But, my dear fellow, they’ll get young again fast enough when they see you!”
“I have a presentiment,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Look out at the view before us, this dead countryside. No smoke rises from Ingolstadt. There is not a soul in the fields. Does not this suggest defeat? Last Sunday there were still some men among the idlers at the gate who came to stare at the French. To-day there were only women and children. All their men are at the front. And this wind from France! I am sure that it is sweeping back their armies. I am confident that just now, when we were drinking our toasts, we were unwittingly celebrating a French victory.”
He went on to speak of his family and of his studies. The cold breeze stung our faces. A chill vapour was floating across the melancholy plain, so that it seemed as if all that we looked down upon was covered with mysterious veils of crêpe. How sweet it was to me to listen, in exile, to the delicately simple confidences of this son of France.
When I re-entered the “salon,” Durupt, back from vespers, was reading the German translation of a novel by Sienkiewicz, _Mit Feuer und Schwert_. He turned towards me with a dazed and yet decisive air: “Old Riou, I have a presentiment of victory!”
A batch of eighty-two convalescent wounded arrived at the fort on the stroke of five. We thought at first that they were ordinary prisoners sent here direct from the last battle. We were already running to meet them on the bridge, eager for trustworthy news, ready to throw a fire of questions at the unexpected messengers across the curtain of Bavarian bayonets. Then we noticed that several of them were limping, while others, though not limping, were leaning upon sticks after the manner of old men, and we perceived that they had all lost the bronzing of trench and camp life. We were disappointed. These white-faced men came from the hospitals of Ingolstadt, and such drafts, as a rule, bring but little news.