Did I say I had been reading it? That is to use words with unjustifiable looseness; rather should I say that I have been in part reading and in part guessing at it; for it is written in the Angevin patois, which is far beyond my linguistic capacity. Not that Captain Leclerc is a rustic; on the contrary, he is a man of culture and the author of several books, chiefly on and about Anjou, one of which has illustrations from his own hand; but it has amused him in this poem to employ his native dialect, while, since he, like so many French authors, is fighting, the soldierly part of it is authentic.
It was a poor devil of a Poilu—it begins—and he went to the war, automatically enough, knowing without any words about it that the soil which he cultivated must also be defended. That was his duty. After suffering the usual ills of the campaign, suddenly a 210 burst near him, and he never rallied. He just had time to give a few messages to the corporal before he died. "You must tell my wife," he said, "but do it gradually; say, I'm ill first. Give what money I have here to my pals," and so forth. Then, after repeating his testament, he passed quietly away.
On reaching the gate of Heaven the Poilu finds St. Peter beating the mats. "Wipe your shoes," St. Peter says, "and take the right-hand corridor. The Judgment Hall is at the end." All trembling, the poor fellow passes along the corridor, at the end of which an angel in white takes down particulars as to his name, his class, and so forth, and tells him that he is expected. Entering the Judgment Hall, the Poilu is bewildered by its austerity and splendour. The Good God is at the head, between Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin. All the saints are there, and the Poilu notices particularly the military ones—St. George, St. Hubert, St. Michael, St. Leonard, St. Marcel, St. Charlemagne, St. Martin, St. Sulpice, St. Barbe, St. Maurice, and St. Jeanne d'Arc. Seeing all these famous soldiers, he exclaims, "It's a Conseil de Guerre! Perhaps I can slip away." But escape is impossible, and at this moment the Good God tells him to begin his history.
"What did you do before the war?" He asks. The Poilu replies that he was a farmer in a very small way; he worked on the land, and he had some stock—two oxen, a horse, a cow, a wife, some fowls, "and, saving your presence, a pig." "Ah!" exclaims St. Anthony, "a pig! That reminds me! Pigs! Sois béni, mon frère." But the Good God frowns, and St. Anthony makes himself very small.
And then, the Poilu continues, he became a soldier, which leads to the awkward question, had he always behaved himself as such? Alas! it appears that he had not. For one thing, he has not always been sober, he is confessing, when Noah interrupts with the comment that insobriety is not such a very serious affair. In fact, he himself once ... and by this time the reader begins to get the drift of this joyous humane fantasy, the point being that the hierarchy of Heaven are all on the side of the brave simple soldier who has died that France might live. As how could they not be? Another time, the Poilu continues, he was sent to prison for cutting a piece from his coat in order to mend the seat of his trousers—in other words, for injuring Government property; and here St. Martin breaks in with indignation at the punishment. "Why, when I did very much the same," he says, "and cut my cloak to cover a paralytic, I was canonized for it!" And so on.
Then comes a graver note. The Poilu, feeling an effort to be necessary, for the Good God has never relaxed His sternness throughout, becomes eloquent. Not only was he killed, but before that, he says, he suffered much. The hardships of war on the Western front are terrible. He had been famished, he had been frozen, he had been burned by the sun. He had been sleepless, he had been footsore, and the sweat had poured from him under his heavy burdens, for often he had carried not only his own haversack but those of his comrades. In short.... But here St. Simon, speaking softly to Christ, says, "Like you, Lord, at Golgotha." In my prose this is, of course, too crude; but I assure you that in the poem it is a great moment. And another follows it, for as the Good God still says nothing, the Poilu points to the blue robe of the Blessed Virgin, and to the great white beard of the Good God himself, and to the red cloak of our Lord, and exclaims, "Voilà mes trois couleurs. The three colours of France. It was for them that I have lost my life; fighting for them has brought me to this Judgment Hall!"
That is fine, is it not? Only the French genius is capable of just such a splendid blend of naïveté, emotion, and the best kind of theatricalism. And at these words at last the Good God smiles, and behind Him Heaven opens for the Poilu to enter.
There is a little more—for it seems that Heaven is full of Poilus with blue caps, and golden helmets, and wings that remove the possibility of getting wet feet or weary feet any more for ever and ever. And our Poilu joins these others, who look happy and are happy, and sings with them "Glory to God in the highest," while the angels, not perhaps wholly without irony, answer, "Peace on earth and goodwill to men."