When remounting the slopes I had indeed heard the bells, and had noted with surprise that the blue-and-white Bavarian standard was floating over the fort; but meeting Guido outside room 32, I learned from him that it was the Theresientag and I was therefore able to reassure Durupt. The vegetables were now being prepared.
“No more news, no more papers, no more enthusiasm—it suggests the deluge!” says Labassan, a light-hearted fellow, all goitre and paunch, ever playing the fool, nicknamed l’Asticot (the maggot). He peels his potato with inimitable gestures which set the whole circle in fits.
Among them is Bonin, a Parisian, of the 31st of the line, the 31st half-brigade of Valmy, my regiment. On August 24th, at Longuyon in Meurthe-et-Moselle, he was wounded in the face, a bullet passing in at one cheek and out at the other. I am very fond of this little workman of the Marais quarter; his clear and quiet eyes radiate patriotism and good sense.
“Give me a match,” says Loupe, who wears the long white cap of the German “Michael,” its tassel dangling over his ear. With deliberation he lights his great china pipe, adorned with a view of Ingolstadt. Then, having rolled a spill of paper, he asks: “Who wants a light?” He goes the round of the circle, offering his burning spill. “‘Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt,’” he quotes. “Freely translated, ‘Matches are scarce!’” For Loupe is lettered.
“Ah, my poilus,” says a homely fellow of the 26th, a man sturdy as an oak, “it is plain enough that, with all these Maccabees about, the crows will have a fat time of it. They’ll breed like rabbits! But we may hope that after a while there will come the season of the lean kine. When there’s no more human food, they’ll be forced to eat one another.”
“Don’t you worry about the crows,” rejoins a red cross man from Rheims. “It is we who are starving. Some of our men here actually turn over the kitchen refuse to find food!”
Our rations are indeed dwindling. This morning the quartermaster delivered to the kitchen staff so scanty an allowance of coffee and roasted barley that it hardly served to darken the water in our eight cauldrons. On Sunday each man had to be content with 1⅓ oz. of semolina at midday, and with ⅔ oz. of vermicelli in the evening. And what are we to think of this heap of potatoes on the ground at my feet? Is it intended to feed five hundred men, or one section merely? And to-day is the Theresientag! Really, matters begin to look serious. It is hardly an exaggeration to say “We are starving!” Who is responsible? Who has made up his mind to turn the fort into a hunger camp? It is certainly not the commandant, a thorough gentleman, kind-hearted, courteous, and just. Who then? Perhaps the quartermaster, an ill-bred Upper Franconian, cross-grained, obstinate as a mule, but whom I should have thought too stupid to be a cheat, is feathering his nest by giving us short allowance. Or is it possible that the ultra-orthodox Monsieur de Hertling, philosopher and prime minister of Bavaria, has made up his mind to starve the prisoners of “the infidel and perverse nation”?
Enter Marie and d’Arnoult. The former, cleared unceremoniously out of the kitchen because his traffic in articles of food became too notorious, is brandishing the censer from the chapel. The requiem mass is about to be said, and on this occasion the old curé of Lenting is to officiate, assisted by nine of our comrades, soldier-priests. The extemporized sacristan has no tongs; crouching before the stove, he is endeavouring with finger and thumb to remove the hot coals destined a few minutes hence to burn incense before the flesh and blood of Christ.
D’Arnoult, of the 6th mounted chasseurs (known in the fort simply as “le Chasseur”), is Major von Stengel’s secretary. He takes his seat by my side. Having read the papers, he is able to inform me that in France the 15th class is to be called up on November 2nd. He relates that the Russians seem inclined to repeat with the Germans the tactics successfully employed against Napoleon: to entice them far into the interior, where they will perish of cold and hunger; to harass them unceasingly by threatened attacks; to break up their forces into incoherent fragments, and then to overwhelm these isolated detachments in detail amid the snows.