M. von Stengel is of much the same way of thinking as Max.
Little as he seems to notice, wishing, as he does, to avoid having to allot punishment, hardly anything happens in the fort without his being aware of it. Nothing licit or illicit escapes his keen gaze, and what he does not see he divines. Nevertheless, with the roguish indulgence of a grand seigneur, he is careful to avoid any display of anger. I am confident that he derives a good deal of secret enjoyment from the contemplation of the network of customs, subterfuges, and evasions, whose threads are interwoven behind the iron grating of German regulations. He watches with amusement the supple boldness with which prudent advances are made, the care with which direct conflict with authority is avoided, and the ingenuity with which the regulations are taken in the flank, circumvented, or ignored. He admires the stratagems by means of which this miniature France, prisoned in a foreign fortress, is enabled to reintegrate the life of the homeland. He does not fail to recognize that these breaches of discipline serve, even more clearly than the ingenuity with which the breaches are effected, to manifest the hardihood of his prisoners, and to prove their possession of an individuality at once gentle and intractable.
This German, at any rate, does not regard the French as “monkeys.” He is not misled by their superficial levity, their suppleness, their apparent scepticism—shining armour with which they protect their ego, a vivacious and rebellious ego, which resists everything, which always gets even, is ever elastic, artful, or frank, as circumstances prescribe, but immalleable, incapable of being passive, obstinately itself. The commandant is impressed with the fact that the Frenchman is what he is and remains what he is, jealous of his privacy, greatly prizing his own humour, tastes, and ideas. It may be that M. von Stengel considers that we are excessively individualized, that whilst we often seem to treat grave matters as trifles, the least onslaught upon our intimate personality arouses in us an excess of fury, a revolt which may go so far as to compromise the collective interest. But it is certain that he knows us and accepts us as we are. He imposes no constraint, and has no desire to refashion us after the Teuton model. It is even possible that he regards with secret approval the delicate compost of national merits and peculiarities. In any case, in his relations with us he is extremely careful to do everything he can to blunt the sharp, harassing, and painful angles of Germanic discipline.
Nevertheless this man, so sensible, moderate, and well-bred, does not possess a perfectly unified character. One recognizes in him both the German and the natural man. The former enunciates cynical maxims to the latter, insisting, for example, upon the value of war for war’s sake. The latter listens, but shies at the idea. It is as if, while enjoying the refined sweetness of a French morning, he should suddenly be disturbed by the horrid bellowing of all the war-horns of the Huns. The dicta of this brutal philosophy rack his ears. But, being good-mannered, he hearkens. His brother seems to him a thick-skinned fellow, coarse-blooded, grim, and savage-hearted. However, he makes no protest. His brother reiterates his statements, repeats his massive assertions loudly and unceasingly, and insists upon agreement. He has to pay for being well-mannered, for hating scenes, for disliking to give pain. From very kindness of heart, from love of peace, from very sensitiveness, he assumes a barbaric mask. The good brother! It goes much against the grain, but he gives an apparent assent.
It is thanks to a series of such sacrifices, invariably one-sided, that the German and the natural man seem, in Baron von Stengel, to live on harmonious terms.
His natural man is good and just. Making no parade of humanitarian convictions, he practises humaneness.
It is touching to watch this grand old man, lofty of stature, with a solid prognathous chin, irreproachably dressed, when he stops to speak to a soldier suffering from despondency. “Fous êtes triste?” he asks in his slow and broken French, gently pulling the man by the ear. The prisoner does not misunderstand; he knows that though the major can read French he is unable to speak it, and that in this laconic phrase he desires to condense an entire friendly conversation.
A few days ago, having learned that a loaf of bread priced at thirty pfennig had been sold at one mark fifty pfennig to a prisoner by a soldier of the guard, he was greatly enraged, and in the presence of Durupt, who was helping him to write up the register of money orders, he exclaimed, “There is but one price for bread, and I shall proceed with the utmost rigour against anyone, be he French or German, who asks a higher price. It is disgraceful to rob prisoners in this way!” The joke is that officially we are not supposed to buy anything at all.
The day before yesterday there was a fall of sleet. The men were loitering up and down the corridors. In front of the Kommandantur there was a great clatter of hobnailed shoes, and the noise was reinforced by light songs, laughter, and chatter. The commandant was reading our eleven hundred letters. Two days earlier he had sent them to Ingolstadt. Headquarters, cantankerous as usual, had returned them, under some pretext, to be re-read. This was something calculated to put the gentlest of men out of humour. Scrupulously obedient to orders, he was now for the second time reading these poor papers, badly written in pencil, insipid, and all exactly alike. On the other side of the door, the procession of prisoners passed and repassed unceasingly. The clatter of nails on the cement got on his nerves. “Oh, the noise, the noise!” he said, as if speaking to himself. D’Arnoult was there and rose from his seat, intending to ask the comrades to be a little quieter. The commandant stopped him, saying, “No, monsieur d’Arnoult, do not go out. Mein Zimmer ist doch nur eine Kanzlei—after all, my room is only an office!” And once more he immersed himself in his reading.
Withal, in the major’s innermost being, the natural man invariably acts and governs. The other, the German, merely utters professions of faith.