The kitchen staff sits down a second time. Every one is enchanted with the surgeon-in-chief.
In the passages there is an unusual movement. Ordinarily, when supper is over, most of the men lie down upon their straw. The roll-call finds them nearly all asleep. During these two hours there is no life in the fort, except in the kitchens and in the consulting room, which are, after a fashion, clubs where the few intellectuals assemble to enjoy their tobacco in company, to read the paper, or to drink the beer which the most diplomatic among the circle has secured at a high price from the guardroom—all these actions being utterly contrary to regulations.
It sometimes happens, however, that in their casemates the Bretons of the 19th and the 118th of the line, suffering from home-sickness, are day-dreaming as they lie motionless on their couches. If, now, one of them begins to hum softly to himself, his comrades, silent men for the most part, will little by little take up the strain. Most of them have clear, tender, somewhat bleating voices. They drag at the end of the verses. The movement is heavy and lachrymose. It sounds like the desolate psalmody of a religion of despair unillumined by a single gleam of hope. Or again, in rooms No. 16 and No. 17, two fragments translated from Provence, one hears on certain evenings, voiced with a glad pulsation, Magali, Galanto Chatouno, and other love-songs of old Languedoc, that country of leisure and passion. The round coming to call the roll stops sometimes outside the door to listen for a moment to these graceful melodies, so different from the German Choral and the German Lied. But the thick crypts and walls muffle these concerts. The fort is not disturbed by them. Even the nearest casemate will only become aware at intervals, and remotely, of the sound of melody. The long corridors, to which the sun never penetrates, are already as quiet, as mournfully quiet, as they are during the heaviest hours before the dawn.
The unusual activity in the passages astonishes the cooks. The conversation outside becomes livelier, and rises to the intensity of a real tumult. It draws nearer. It is at the door of No. 22. Now come blows on the door, shouts and execrations. “Resign, resign! Fritters! Legs of mutton!” Some of the rioters positively bellow with indignation. The blows on the door become more violent. “Come out, if you dare!”
This goes on for quite two minutes. The slender repast is finished. It is time to fetch some coal. Pailloux and Bouquet, the head cook, take up the coal-box, open the door, and say firmly: “Make way for us, by thunder!” They pass out. But through the door, which is left ajar, fists are shaken, and vociferations rain in. “Food snatchers!” Durupt, shrugging his shoulders, shuts the door in the shouters’ faces. The demonstration becomes still more lively. The noise must be heard a long way off, for suddenly there comes a terrible growling, raucous and determined: “Zurück mit dem Pöbel!”[23] In an instant the crowd, numbering about fifty, disperses like a flight of sparrows. A single man, Georg, the commandant’s boot-polisher, has broken the back of the riot. He disappears. The corridors relapse into silence, the mournful silence of a cellar.…
We are invited to No. 41, to visit Juramy and Roy, chasseurs alpins, together with Foch, d’Arnoult, and Brissot. We go out. A man of the guard, with fixed bayonet, slowly walks by the kitchen. He smiles and greets us.
“Grüss Gott!”
“Gute Nacht!”
On the staircases and in the upper corridors the “ministers” encounter glances of anger and surprise. At No. 41 the comrades, seated upon the twin straw piles of Roy and Juramy, receive them with marked friendliness.