Great preparations were made for the reception of the army which had for some days been encamped in the immediate neighbourhood of Paris. It was to enter by the Place de la Bastille, to follow the line of the Boulevards, to go down the Rue de la Paix, and cross the Place Vendôme. The Boulevards were decorated with flags. On the Place Vendôme, immense stands had been erected for the members of the Government and their guests. The weather was splendid. When the troops came into sight along the Boulevards, vast applause burst forth. The crowd thronged on both sides of the pavement. Heads rose above heads at the windows. Women waved their handkerchiefs and threw down the flowers from their dresses to the soldiers. All the while, the soldiers kept on passing with their regular step, in the midst of frantic hurrahs. The bands played; the colours fluttered in the sun. Several, which had been pierced by balls, received applause, and one in particular, which was in rags, and crowned. At the corner of the Rue du Temple an old woman flung herself headlong into the ranks and embraced a corporal, her son, no doubt. They came near to carrying that happy mother in triumph.
The official ceremony took place in the Place Vendôme. There, ladies in full dress, magistrates in their robes, and officials in uniform applauded with more gravity. In the evening, the Emperor gave a banquet to three hundred persons at the Louvre, in the Salle des Etats. As he was proposing a toast, which has remained historic, he exclaimed: “If France has done so much for a friendly people what would she not do for her own independence?” An imprudent speech which he must have regretted later. Julien and I had seen the march past from a window in the Boulevard Poissonière. He had been to the camp the night before and had told Louis where we should be. Thus when his regiment passed Louis lifted his head to greet us. He was much older, and his face was brown and thin. I could hardly recognise him. He looked like a man, compared with us who were still children, slender and pale like women. Julien followed him with his eyes as long as he could, and I heard him murmur, with tears in his eyes, while a nervous emotion shook him: “It is beautiful after all—it is beautiful.”
In the evening I met them both again in a little café of the Quartier Latin. It was a small place at the end of an alley where we generally went, because we were alone there and could talk at our ease. When I arrived, Julien, with both elbows on the table, was already listening to Louis, who was telling him about Solferino. He said that no battle had ever been less foreseen. The Austrians were thought to be in retreat and the allied armies were advancing when suddenly, about five in the morning, on the 24th, they had heard guns—it was the Austrians who had turned and were attacking us. Then a series of fights had begun, each division taking its turn. All day long, the different generals had fought separately, without having any clear idea of the total form of the struggle. Louis had taken part in a terrible hand-to-hand conflict in a cemetery, in the midst of graves; and that was about all he had seen. He also spoke of the terrible storm which had broken out towards the evening. The heavens took part and the thunder silenced the guns. The Austrians had to give up the field in a veritable deluge. They had been firing on each other for sixteen hours, and the night which followed was full of terrors, for the soldiers did not exactly know which way the victory had gone, and at every sound in the darkness they thought that the battle was beginning again.
During this tale Julien kept on looking at his brother. Perhaps he was not even listening, but was happy in merely having him before his eyes. I shall never forget the evening spent thus in that obscure and peaceful café, whence we heard the murmur of festival Paris, while Louis was leading us across the bloody fields of Solferino. When he had finished Julien said quietly:—
“Anyway, you are here and what does anything else matter?”
III.
Eleven years later, in 1870, we were grown men. Louis had reached the rank of captain. Julien, after various beginnings, had settled down to the idle, ever-occupied life of those wealthy Parisians who frequent literary and artistic society without themselves ever touching pen or paint brush.
There was great excitement at the first report of a war with Germany. People’s brains were fevered: there was talk about our natural frontier on the Rhine, and about avenging Waterloo, which had remained a weight on our hearts. If the campaign had been opened by a victory, France would certainly have blessed this war which she ought to have cursed.
Paris certainly would have felt disappointed if peace had been maintained, after the stormy sittings of the Corps Legislatif. On the day when conflict became inevitable, all hearts beat high. I am not speaking now of the scenes which took place in the evenings on the boulevards, of the shrieking crowds, or the shouts of men who may have been paid, as, later on, it was declared that they had been. I only say that, among sober citizens, the greater number were marking out on maps the different stages of our army as far as Berlin. The Prussians were to be driven back with the butt end of the rifle. This absolute confidence of victory was our inheritance from the days in which our soldiers had passed, always conquering, from one end of Europe to the other. Nowadays we are thoroughly cured of that very dangerous patriotic vanity.
One evening when I was on the Boulevard des Capucines, watching hordes of men in blouses who passed along, yelling, “À Berlin! À Berlin,” I felt someone touch me on the shoulder. It was Julien. He was very gloomy. I reproached him with his lack of enthusiasm.