Jacques Fontaine understood, gentlemen, that the banner is the regiment.
When he had made this arrangement, he called Lupec, and they found a man skilled in writing, and they prepared a regimental roll. Those stragglers from other regiments who had joined them were mustered in after a formula which Jacques Fontaine devised. In the end, the two hundred and seven men were one body and one soul, and Jacques Fontaine was satisfied with the arrangement.
Having counted his men, he began, thriftily, to consider their equipment.
He found that these two hundred and seven men had two hundred and fifty-four rifles. A hundred or so of these rifles were German; and for these weapons there was a plentiful supply of German ammunition. But there were very few cartridges for the French rifles; there were only the long, needle-like bayonets.
Jacques Fontaine was vexed with this discovery. He was one of those penurious peasants whom De Maupassant knew how to paint, my friends. He could not bear poverty, or waste. He derived a solid satisfaction from the mere possession of wealth; and his conception of wealth was strictly in accord with academic economic principles. Any useful article was wealth to him.
He perceived that while his command was wealthy in rifles and bayonets, it was very badly off indeed for cartridges.
He sat down on a big rock at the head of the ravine, while the men with little fires cooked supper in the deeps below him; and he took off his hat and scratched his head and considered what to do. Another man might have chosen his course more swiftly; it required some hours for Jacques Fontaine to make up his mind.
But when he rose from the rock, this man had laid out before his feet the path they were to follow through the four interminable and glorious years which were to come.
Any other man would have been wise enough to know that the plan he had chosen was impossible. Jacques Fontaine was valorously stupid. He did not know he could not do that which he planned to do, gentlemen.
Therefore, he did the impossible.