Baumann was not quick to appreciate irony even in its crudest form. He smiled as one accepting compliments.
“We do our best, my dear Gerard,” and Gerard beamed with satisfaction. He had heard what he had wanted to hear, and he would not spoil its flavour. He rose at once and took up his cap.
“I will go and see the Governor-General.”
“You will find him next door,” said Baumann. “We keep him next door to us whilst he is in Paris, so far as we can.”
“You are very wise,” said Gerard, gravely, and he went next door, which was the War Office. There he met his chief, who said:
“You have seen Baumann? Good! Take a little leave, but go as soon as you can. Ten days, eh? I will see you in a fortnight at Rabat,” and the Governor-General passed on to the Elysée.
Gerard de Montignac did not, however, take his ten days. He knew his chief, a tall, preëminent man, both in war and administration, who, with the utmost good-fellowship, expected much of his officers. Gerard spent one day in Paris and then travelled to Marseilles. At Marseilles he had to wait two days, and visited in consequence a hospital where a number of Moorish soldiers lay wounded, men of all shades from the fair Fasi to the coal-black negro from the south. Their faces broke into smiles as Gerard exchanged a word or a joke with them in their own dialects.
He stopped a little abruptly at the foot of one bed in which the occupant lay asleep with—a not uncommon sight in the ward—a brand-new medaille militaire pinned upon the pillow.
“He is badly hurt?” Gerard asked.
“He is recovering very well,” said the nurse who accompanied him. “We expect to have him out of the hospital in a fortnight.”