“Well!” says Sergeant Foch, the sturdiest soldier in the fort, chief of the second kitchen, “so it’s your turn this time. You have had your revolt! It seems to have been better organized than mine. But it means nothing. We business men, Brissot and I, know all about the caprices of the crowd. Suddenly, without knowing why, it rages against friends or against foes, haphazard. These good fellows are governed by pure instinct. In my opinion this particular revolt has been mainly the work of the exploiters whose usurious traffic was relentlessly suppressed by Dutrex and Durupt. It’s bad policy to be savage with the strong and gentle with the weak, for the strong avenge themselves. Now they are posing as defenders of the collective stomach. If you only knew all that they are saying, and all that they are leading others to say! I’ve had my eye on them for a long time. This evening they really believed they were going to do something—that to-morrow they would usurp your places. They were already licking their chops. It was a case of trust against trust. I shall laugh if the trust of virtue proves, for once in a way, victorious.”
Dutrex is taciturn.
“Before the roll is called,” he says, “I shall hand in my resignation to M. Langlois.”
“That’s right,” says Brissot approvingly. “Otherwise you will seem to be clinging to a fat position.”
“What are you thinking about?” protests Durupt. “You will seem to justify the enemy; you will accept defeat. The sharp practitioners who, under pretext of serving their comrades, were buying for sixpence from the guard commodities worth about twopence, and selling them at a profit of a shilling, thus realizing as much as a pound a day—these fellows whom you saw through, who would have liked to blarney you, but whom you summoned to the table, whom you shook as one shakes a plum-tree, whom you threatened with the cells (some of them even non-commissioned officers), whom you treated in that cutting way which you know how to assume—these sneak-thieves, who are almost as repulsive as the body strippers, do you want with your own hand to put them in your place in the kitchen? I don’t understand you. I stand firm. If there be a trust of virtue, I promise you it shall checkmate the trust of the lick-cheeses.”
“Meanwhile,” says Foch light-heartedly, “let us drink. Here’s a big jug of beer which I brought from the guardroom under my coat. For your sake I made myself look like a woman in the family way! What, old Riou, are you still in the dumps? Haven’t you got a thirst this evening?”
“My dear Foch, I admit that I do not feel myself to be designed for the government of men. One who wishes to rule men must make up his mind to despise them and to come to terms with their rascality. Now (you will laugh), I respect them. I am even rather fond of them. And it is my weakness to wish them to be fond of me. These hostile cries, these angry glances, which we have just had to endure—I find them difficult of digestion.”
“Digest them as quickly as you can, you big baby! It’s a stage in your education. You need to lose a few illusions. Men are rather a poor lot. You Christians believe that men are brothers. That’s nothing but religious tosh. Men are no good. Brothers?—not a bit of it. They are venomously jealous of any one who has a straighter nose or a prettier wife than their own, of any one with greater talent or more charm. No doubt the worst of them have their good days. When the weather is fine, when their bellies are well lined, when they have done a good stroke of business, they are pleased with every one. They are all smiles. But what does that amount to? A momentary intoxication. The instant they fancy that their neighbour’s belly is fuller than their own, or that he has had better luck in business, there is very little smile about them, and don’t you forget it. It is true that some men are the salt of the earth. These are worth loving, for they are scarce. But most people pass their whole lives in being envious. When it’s their turn to become stiffs, it’s envy that finishes them off!
“If they had any sense, these fellows, I shouldn’t mind so much. But they swallow all the gossip that comes their way. Morning after morning a flight of canards settles upon the fort, and the prisoners spend the rest of the day in roasting them. Do you know what they are all telling one another in the casemates? They declare that the major with four stripes made a raid upon kitchen No. 22, and that he found fifty chops, seventy steaks, a leg of mutton, a lot of fritters, a store of cheese—all pinched by Durupt from the men’s rations. Whereupon the major sent you to the cells under guard of four bayonets! Now you know why these rascals looked at you with angry surprise as you passed along the passage.