THE FOUR FEARS OF OUR GENERAL
SOUVENIRS of CHILDHOOD
Adapted from the French by Adele Bacon.
THE SECOND FEAR.
The battle on the mountain had passed off much better than we had dared to hope, and, although we had not found our enemies as sound asleep as we had desired, our early morning attack had never-the-less completely surprised them. We managed to seize their recent position on the plateau with scarcely any loss. This position, although a very exposed one, was worth a great deal more, from the strategist’s point of view, than the valley in which we were encamped the night before. Besides, in making war, it is always desirable to occupy those places voluntarily selected and defended by an opponent.
Our work, however, was by no means over; another sort of effort lay before us.
Our foes, driven from their position on the heights, had succeeded in forming another; and were strongly entrenched on the lower extremity of the same plateau, from the loftier end of which we had so lately dislodged them.
With a considerable amount of adroitness, they had succeeded in placing a little river, called the Oued-el-Kebir, between our camp and their own. We were compelled therefore to cross this river, in order to force them to move farther on, and abandon to us the territory that we both coveted.
We had resolved, once our morning’s work was over, to enjoy a much needed repose on our hardly earned mountain; but, towards noon, everybody was on foot, excepting several badly wounded soldiers, and the little group of officers, who had chatted together near the General’s tent the preceding evening, were invited to drink a cup of coffee with him in the most picturesque smoking room that I have ever seen, although the picturesque quality is by no means rare in Algeria.
It was an enclosure walled in by rocks in the shape of heaps of large pennies, arranged side by side, so as to form an amphitheatre, the slope of which permitted us to see, by the aid of our glasses, the new field on which we were soon to operate.
The country, which was beautiful so far as the scenery was concerned, presented no insolvable military problems; it was wooded, but not impenetrable.
We would of course have much preferred not to be separated from the place of attack by a long, serpentine strip of water, which, swollen by the recent melting of the snow, added materially to the defence of our adversaries. It goes without saying that we possessed neither artillery to protect our passage nor boats to effect it. In pursuits such as now occupied us, a train of artillery could only be an encumbrance, and the river which flowed sometimes in a valley, and sometimes between high, steep banks, made it almost a certainty that we should get a thorough wetting before we reached the other side. We knew that the General had sent the necessary men to measure the depth of that barrier of water, and to see if we should have the good luck to find a place for fording it. In default of this, we should be forced to make use of our temporary bridges, but we did not wish to count absolutely on them. In making war, one can usually tell best what to do on the spur of the moment. While waiting for the necessary information to be brought in for making such preparations as were possible, and for the night to come, fully half a day must elapse. The General had thought that crossing at night was less dangerous. Little Jacques, grown up, had no longer a horror of shadows, and even liked to utilize them. When we had considered, found great fault with, and speculated upon the meditated expedition, we returned to our conversation of the preceding night.
The General had had the imprudence to speak to us of two stories; we had heard one; what about the other?
Captain Robert,—the officer with whom the General sometimes quarrelled, perhaps because he felt that he had an especial partiality for him,—being slyly urged on by the rest of us, had the indiscretion to ask him for it.
“Oh, as to that one, my children, you must not insist,” said the General. “It is only a story of childhood, which has none of the qualities which made the other acceptable to grown men. I have no taste for failures,—you will cause me to be guilty of one.”
“General,” replied the obstinate captain, “you have just called us your children, therefore a child’s story is quite suitable for us. It will rejuvenate us. Children are amused by everything, you know, and if by chance your second tale is a trifle more gay than the first, very well,—we shall enjoy it.”
“Gay!” responded the General, “I don’t know about that. However, it is not a tragedy. But you shall see. You wish it,—so here goes!”
“Perhaps all of you here are not fond of the water,” began the General, casting a significant glance at the river which had preoccupied our thoughts.
“That depends on circumstances,” responded the captain; “water is very good, but there are times when one would rather do without it.”
“Water, mingled with too many gun-shots, and after a difficult march, might prove unhealthy,” interrupted a hoarse voice, that of the doctor. “I should not recommend it as a remedy for my cold, but the water of your story, General,—for I suppose by your commencement your history is going to be a wet one,—will perhaps do me good.”
“Good!” said the General, “here is the doctor who imagines I am going to give him a tonic. But so long as you have wished for it doctor, you must drink it. But no more interruptions:—I have already forgotten where I was.”
“General,” replied the doctor, “you have just said ‘every one here is perhaps not fond of water;’ and you were not contradicted.”
“Thanks!” said the General. “And silence in the ranks; I will recommence.”
“Every one here does not like the water I said, very well, when I was little it seems I was of that same opinion. I didn’t like water. Let us understand each other fully as to the importance which you should attach to my repugnance to this fluid, during these first years of my life. I accepted water in many ways: I loved it sugared, and even with a little orange flavor, but I hated it cold on my face in winter, and only allowed myself to be washed willingly when it was warm. I liked, too, to stand on a bridge, and watch the water flowing underneath, and by a strange contradiction, I even enjoyed going on it, in a boat—with papa. But I should have had a horrible fear to fall in the water, or have it go suddenly over my head. To be frank, I believe I should have been frightened to have it up to my ankles, otherwise than in a foot bath. But then, one is not born perfect.
“This fear of the water was the despair of my father. He, like a practical man, thought my love of boats and navigation, and my horror of all actual contact with it, were contradictory if not incompatible traits; that the liking for it on the one hand and the dislike of it on the other argued as complete an absence of logic in the brain of his little son as in his physical and moral organisms. He was right. Aunt Marie and my mother were guilty of the sugared and warm water, but my antipathy for it, otherwise than in these forms, seemed to be a fundamental part of my nature.
“‘There is a reform for you to make in my absence,’ said my father to his wife and his sister-in-law. ‘If I don’t find it accomplished when I return, I agree in any way that you may find best, you will force me to intervene myself, with a method perhaps a little brusque, but of which I have more than once seen the efficacy.
“‘Understand that if I have to throw Jacques into the water like a little dog, to teach him to save himself, I shall do it over and over again, until he finds it agreeable, until he conquers his fright, and learns to swim. Jacques pretends he wishes to become a sailor, like his father, but I shall not allow him to become one of those sailors,—and there are such,—who are actually afraid of the water.’”
“‘Afraid of the water? The child is not afraid of it,’ said mamma.
“‘It is only the cold which he dislikes,’ added my aunt.
“‘Really! And you can suggest no other remedy than to heat the brooks and the rivers, the lakes and the seas, expressly for our little darling? That would be, according to your ideas, a reform more easily carried out than the correction of his fear of cold water!’
“‘Correction! Correction!’ replied aunt Marie impatiently. ‘One can not “correct” one’s nervous system at will, my dear brother, one has to cure it as one can. There are certain organisms which must be left to correct themselves, with age. Our Jacques is brave in many ways, as you well know; he has really only one fear,—that of contact with cold water. Well, that will pass in time, as he grows older.’
“‘Time! time!’ returned my father, ‘time passes, but not our defects, when, instead of correcting them, we leave them alone, or envelop them in cotton. Sister Marie, do not change my boy into a little girl.’
“‘Your son,’ responded aunt Marie, ‘is as yet neither a boy nor a girl: he is an angel, and you ought to be glad of it.’
“‘Glad!’ replied my father. ‘I can tell you about that better on my return. However, I reserve the right of trying to find a young sailor in your angel, some fine morning. I will not take you unawares. I have warned both you and my wife. When I come back, I will take your little Jacques with me in a boat, and whether he knows how to swim or not, I will make him brave, in spite of himself.’
“This conversation made my aunt and my mother tremble. Although they were apparently against me, they were really on my side. They tried to encourage me, telling me I should be a sailor first, and a brave one,—an admiral soon after. This delighted me. ‘What a pity, though,’ I said to myself, ‘that water is so cold and wet, and that one can not walk on it without sinking. Why should it be so?’”
“The moment has come, to speak to you of my uncle, my father’s brother. This brother, who was older than my father by about ten years, was a retired officer. What a wonderful man he was too! It seems to me that I had known only great and heroic people, in my childhood. It was hardly possible to turn out badly, in the midst of such fine beings. What is good in me, I owe altogether to them. My uncle had traveled extensively. He had taken part in all the campaigns of the first Republic, and of the First Empire, and had brought back from them a love of flowers which you may explain as best you can. He loved the land as much as my father loved the sea, but only for the purpose of covering it with flowers. He possessed a charmingly situated property, on the outskirts of the town, where he cultivated, with excessive care, a magnificent collection of roses, celebrated throughout the entire horticultural world. This collection contained more than four thousand varieties: I repeat, four thousand, catalogued, numbered, each with a name and a history. Certain people pretend to tell them apart at a glance, but I must say it was easier to confound them in an equal degree of admiration. I should have felt unjust in preferring one to another, and I admitted a difference in them only in their colors. My father called his brother’s place ‘the Garden of Roses.’ The Garden of Roses was for me the only serious rival of the court of aunt Marie’s hospital, and do you know why? Not because it was sweeter smelling, and richer in flowers than any place I have ever seen elsewhere; not because I always brought back beautiful bouquets for my mother, for aunt Marie and for her chapel; not because it was bordered on one entire side by a pretty little river, but because upon that river my uncle Antoine, out of honor for his brother, the sailor, kept a small, but very attractive looking, boat. In this boat, which appeared immense to me, my father used to take me on short voyages, not in the water, but on the water, which frightened me so much. When I was navigating on the little stream, how many times have I imagined that I was on the ocean, en route for America, India, the North Pole, or the Island of Robinson Crusoe.
“At the time of which I speak, my father, after a year passed upon the seas of China, returned to spend a three months’ holiday with us. I felt that I must make the most of it. The year before, I had been delighted to go with him on many little expeditions, both by land and water. But this year, alas! I expected little pleasure on the latter. One of the first questions he asked was whether I was still afraid of my old enemy. I was obliged to confess that I still felt the same in regard to it.
“‘What! But how old are you?’
“Brother,’ said aunt Marie, ‘he was just six years old when you left us.’
“‘But according to that your pupil is now seven.’
“‘Yes, papa, seven,’ said I. ‘I am getting to be a big boy.’
“‘Big! Yes, that is possible. But the larger you are, my poor Jacques, the less excuse you have for not knowing how to swim, for having fear of the water.’
“‘He has tried,’ interposed my aunt. ‘I had uncle Antoine’s gardener, who is an excellent swimmer, give him a lesson in the river, but he came out so blue with cold that I dared not let him go back again. Although he neither cried nor complained, I am certain he would have died in less than five minutes.’
“‘You believe that, perhaps, my poor dear sister,’ replied my father. ‘It is, however, an experience which he will have to repeat. But I warn Jacques that in the meantime, or until he is able to swim, at least a few feet, there will no longer be a boat for him at the “Garden of Roses.” The St. Jacques (which was the name given in my honor to my uncle’s boat)—the St. Jacques must remain at anchor.’
“This was terrible, but it was irrevocable. It never entered my head to try to make my father alter his decision.
“Then he said to me, ‘My boy, you love boats, but hate the water; when you have rendered two such contrary propositions a little more harmonious, when you are no longer afraid of wetting your precious little skin, you may voyage all you like in uncle Antoine’s boat. Until then, do not dream of doing so. One should never go in a boat unless one is capable of taking care of one’s self in case of accident.’
“The following morning we went to see uncle Antoine.
“My father and I at length set out. It was good to have him back, to hold his hand, and our disagreement upon one point had not seriously troubled our friendly relations. When we arrived, we found uncle Antoine, who occasionally suffered from the gout, incapable of taking a step in the garden. My father offered to give him his revenge for the game of chess which he had gained from him the year before,—the day previous to his departure.
“‘As for you, Jacques,’ said uncle Antoine, ‘as you have no gout, run away, pick my cherries, eat my strawberries, look at my roses, go and see your chickens and rabbits and feed them for me. You would perhaps do well to take along a book, your ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ go and read it in the hammock. Take a nap, if that pleases you, but whatever you do, be good. When one is not watched, there is a double duty and a double merit in being good.’
“‘I will add,’ put in my father, ‘that you may go in the path by the edge of the water, and you will do well to watch attentively what goes on in the river. Flowing water is an instructive spectacle for a boy like you.’
“‘Instructive?’ queried my uncle.
“‘Full of information,’ answered my father. ‘It is in the water that the fishes swim. It is in the water also that Jacques will have to swim very shortly,—like a fish.’
“‘Like a fish?’ said my uncle. ‘Then you will have to give him fins.’
“‘One doesn’t need fins to swim with,’ replied my father. ‘Frogs do not have them, yet they manage to swim beautifully. If Jacques will examine those which he disturbs when he approaches the bank, if he studies the way they keep their heads out of the water in order to breathe, and the art with which they manage their arms and legs, in directing themselves about in that beautiful fresh water which so frightens your nephew, he will receive from these little animals a swimming lesson superior to any that your gardener can give him.’
“‘That is very true’, uncle Antoine replied. ‘Go, Jacques,—go take your lesson. It has never before occurred to me what services my frogs could render you.’
“I was about to start, when my father stopped me with a gesture.
“‘You understand, do you not Jacques, exactly what you are permitted to do? I have still, however, to tell you what you must not do: you are not to set foot upon the St. Jacques; this is forbidden until I tell you otherwise. Do you understand?’
“‘Yes, father, I understand, but⸺’
“‘There isn’t any “but,”’ replied my father.
“Uncle Antoine threw me a compassionate look. However, this look was only meant to say: ‘I am sorry, Jacques, but your father has spoken. I have nothing to say.’
“I did, one after another, the things which were authorized. I ate some cherries, I picked some strawberries, gave grain to the chickens, and cabbage-leaves to our rabbits. I re-read, lying in the hammock, two chapters of my ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ but, far from making me sleepy, this book awoke in me a longing for adventure. I then directed my steps towards the river. I had, however, the wisdom not to go in the direction of the boat,—that is to say, in the direction of temptation. I regarded the flowing water curiously, and found real pleasure in doing so. My uncle’s river was not one of those lazy streams of which the movement is imperceptible. How could it rest mute between its borders, when it was forced to carry its fresh water past the lands of a hundred owners, which, from the right and the left, cried to it—‘Wet us,’ ‘Refresh us,’ ‘We are dying of thirst.’
“It certainly was a spectacle well worth seeing, this continuous flow of clear water over a bed of golden sand, dotted here and there with flexible green plants, which, swaying with every movement of the tide make such charming little retreats for the fish. The minnows and gudgeon glided like shadows between the few large stones which took the place of reefs on this miniature coast. Their goings and comings amused me very much, and I made up my mind that some day one could apply to me as to them the proverb, ‘Happy as a fish in the water.’ All this would have been perfect, if little by little I had not approached the spot where, under the boughs and between the roots of an enormous willow, my uncle had anchored the famous St. Jacques. Desiring not to disobey my father. I had made up my mind not to look at the St. Jacques, not to take a step towards it; this was prudent, but it was ordained that I should break my word that day. Reasons for doing so were not lacking: first—the portion of the walk by the water where I intended to stay being in the hot sun, I had not seen a single frog; the hot herbage did not suit them.
“To take my swimming lesson it was necessary to go to the side where the boat was moored. Only under the willows, and in the damp grass which surrounded the Bay St. Jacques, could I hope to find them. Second—as my father was anxious that I should study how frogs swam, I had made a mistake in keeping away from the only place where I stood some chance of finding them. I knew well that there alone could they always be seen. Besides, going near the St. Jacques was not the same thing as going on the St. Jacques. Third—it is not difficult to refrain from getting into a boat, even when one has a great desire to do so. So I pushed aside the long branches of the great willow which hung down to the ground, and found myself in the presence of the St. Jacques. What a beautiful boat she was! Since I had last seen her my uncle had had her repainted. Her new costume of mingled red and white suited her marvelously; her mast,—there was a mast,—painted also, was even more beautiful than one of those lovely paper wind-mills that one’s parents never buy one. Her pennant had also been renewed. It was certainly for my father’s return that uncle Antoine had gone to the expense of this brilliant toilette. The hull hardly stirred. Its imperceptible balancings on the water resembled the quiet breathing of a sleeping person. Under the transparent veil of the drooping branches of the weeping willow, no breath could reach it. The St. Jacques had the air of a little potentate in repose, under a canopy of verdure. If papa had not forbidden me to get in the little boat, it would have been delightful to read my ‘Swiss Family Robinson’ out upon the water. Sitting in the bow, leaning against the mast, one might imagine one’s self on an island. But then, that which is forbidden one can not prevent from being forbidden.”
“I tried at first to think of nothing but frogs. But, as if on purpose, not one showed himself. I was sure they were hiding in the shadow of the boat. I went up quite close to the St. Jacques, and still nothing jumped into the water. Decidedly, and in spite of all my good intentions, I was not to take my swimming lesson that day. But what were those three green spots that I saw down there on the white edge of the boat? They were,—yes, they were three frogs taking a nap at their ease, as if the St. Jacques belonged to them.
“One could not tolerate a thing of that sort. I stepped gently over the edge of the boat to chase away the trespassers. Paf, paf, paf, with a single hop, each of them made one of those famous dives of which my father had spoken. Now or never was the moment to ask them for a lesson. I did not fail to do so. I was lost in admiration of their talent. Papa was right; a frog swims to perfection. It swims so correctly and elegantly that by its vigorous, regular movements, one understands clearly what one ought to do if one happened to be in its place. This sort of lesson, illustrated by an example, shows one much better what movements to make than when the gardener holds you under the stomach, and shouts you don’t know what in your ears. If father should throw me into the water, I should think of the frogs: I should do as they did, and I should certainly swim.
“What a beautiful boat she was!”
Drawn by Clinton Peters.
“I had reached this point in my resolutions, when the sound of something heavy falling suddenly into the water made me raise my head. The noise was followed by a cry, and this cry by five or six others.
“That which made the noise was something which looked like a big blue package, which was squirming and beating the water frequently, across by the opposite bank.
“I looked with all my eyes, and was filled with horror in recognizing the little boy—still in dresses—of the gardener across the stream whom I had sometimes seen from the bank. The poor little one—I should be more correct in saying the poor big one—had evidently escaped from his mother, and had taken advantage of the occasion to come alone to the river, and turning a summersault by mistake, was now in danger of drowning. He was not exactly happy. He cried like a little madman in the instants when his crimson face emerged from the water, and, by a sort of instinct, beat the water with both hands and feet.
“I noticed that his skirts held him up temporarily, but that could not last long. I began to cry in my turn, and call,—‘Papa! uncle!’—but the sound of my voice could not reach so far, and I felt that there must be something better to do than cry. I said to myself that one must go into the river to rescue the poor child. Yes, but in order to do that, it was necessary to wet one’s self in the cold water, which was particularly disagreeable to me, as you already know, and what was worse, they would see, afterwards, by my wet clothes that I had disobeyed, that I had not stayed in the path, but had broken my word; that was the most terrible part. In a couple of seconds all views of the situation flashed through my mind. Should I try to save the gardener’s little boy? Then I must disobey. An idea came to me which struck me as brilliant. I would take off my shoes, my stockings and my trousers, and leave them in the boat; the water evidently was not very deep, because I could see the bottom; I was quite large and by rolling my shirt up under my vest, I thought I could go. In a moment this was done. In another moment, and without stumbling, I had descended into the water, which, alas! was far from, warm. But that was not all. I had miscalculated the depth of the water and my height, and, when I had taken two or three steps towards the child, who still cried, I saw that if I went any farther I should wet my shirt and my vest. That seemed to me impossible to do. I took one step back toward the boat. The thought did not occur to me that I should have undressed completely at first, and that I might do it even now. Yes, I very nearly left the child to drown, for the sake of not wetting the clothes which I still wore (which, it is true, were new ones) and of not having to admit afterwards, that I had disobeyed.
“My hesitation did not last long. ‘Father will forgive me.’ I said to myself, when he knows all about it, ‘and giving myself up altogether to the sentiment of a duty which I felt was superior to all others, I succeeded, scarcely knowing how, in crossing the river, in reaching the little boy, who had already stopped crying, in pulling his head out of the water first, and then, with infinite pains, in seating him on the first step of a worm-eaten stair-case which mounted the sloping river-bank, towards his father’s garden.
“No one appeared; no answer came to my cries. There were still four steps to mount, to reach the garden: I finally contrived to climb them with my burden. Once there, I laid the child down among the cabbages. From violet, he had become quite pale, and much frightened, I ran towards his parents’ house.”