Day by day the quartermaster became more exasperated at the happiness of five Frenchmen. In accordance with the good German rules, they ought to have been sleeping upon the damp cement in the basement, which is really a dungeon. But since we have had palliasses, the house-surgeon, the apothecary, and their friends—Laloux, Badoy, Scherrer, Massé, and Noverraz—have been sleeping in the consulting-room, where they are masters. This first-floor casemate, adjoining the Kommandantur, is dry, has a boarded floor and a southern aspect. Every evening they made their beds side by side and slept the sleep of the just. M. von Stengel good-naturedly closed his eyes. The Bavarian guard, grateful for the castor oil and the cuppings of Laloux, did likewise. But Ploss, the reservist quartermaster, a Franconian stonemason who speaks of himself as a “sculptor in the building trade,” was scandalized. He is a patriot, a flaming patriot—except where his own skin is concerned. Called to the front a few weeks ago, he went to weep upon the commandant’s bosom. The weeping gained its end, and he is still at Fort Orff.
Frenchmen sleeping dry, with plenty of room! Five Frenchmen bedded in a spacious casemate! Frenchmen passing night and day in the next room to the Kommandantur! Ploss’ soul was desolate.
One morning he went to see Baron von Stengel, and declared that the casemate of the guard, which adjoins on the west the commandant’s casemate, was too small, and that it was essential to use the consulting-room as an overflow. The consulting-room, divided in two by a wooden partition, could serve as a sort of office for the Feldwebel and for himself, the quartermaster; thus the faithful Landwehrleute would have the delight of guarding their dear Herr Major on both sides. The argument was irresistible. The Herr Major acquiesced. Intoxicated with delight, Ploss promptly went up and down the fort announcing the news everywhere, to the guard, to the interpreters, and to the banished men. Prouder even than M. de Morny after the 2nd of December, he luxuriated in his coup d’état.
The door of the room occupied by the six French medical officers opens into the same corridor as the Kommandantur, but on the other side of the main entrance. Laloux and his companions promptly go to knock at the door. They explain the situation. Next minute, M. Langlois, in full dress, wearing gloves, emerges. He descends upon M. von Stengel. He has the most pressing need of a consulting-room, spacious, airy, and sunny! He is crafty, and as persistent as he is diplomatic. The baron agrees to let him have No. 46, the next room to the French officers. An obstinate defender of our rights, he demands in addition that the members of his staff, who give their services to French and Germans alike, shall have permission to sleep in their workroom. Permission is granted. He returns. Our exiles, whistling and singing joyously, hasten to remove their palliasses. Ploss watches them sourly; his coup d’état has missed fire. These French monkeys, they always fall on their feet! But what sort of a Herr Major is this, who can refuse them nothing?
Downstairs, in kitchen No. 22, another turn of fortune’s wheel! The major from the Ingolstadt headquarters, who is but a Ploss with a commission, has been inspecting the fort, and has caught sight of the twin palliasses of Dutrex and Riou. Placed against the wall opposite the stoves, they have been an offence to him. “Clear out, messieurs!” What are we to do? Our places have been filled in our old casemates. We, too, visit M. Langlois. Hitting two birds with one stone, he includes us, as well as Durupt, the money-changer, d’Arnoult, the secretary, and Détry, the dentist, in his request to M. von Stengel. Thus the entire pharmaceutical staff and the whole French bureaucracy of Fort Orff are assigned to the consulting-room.
This happened ten days ago. Since then the victims of the two coups d’état have furnished their quarters. They have adorned their windows with half curtains and have divided their casemate in two with a hanging of flowered lutestring. During the day they arrange their ten palliasses in two piles and cover them with rugs, so that in hours of despondency they have two imposing couches—thrones, as it were. At the very end of the room are the two tables, the one known as the “operating-table,” and the little table whose heavy drawers contain iodine, cupping-glasses, and blue ointment. At their request, Le Second has designed for them shades “à la ballet russe” for their two lamps. On the shelves they have arranged the vermicelli boxes which they use as lockers. The men of room 26, a centre of artistic life, have made them some additional shelves. An old herring-box plays the part of flower-vase, filled at this moment with silver thistles and a spray of barberry, magnificently red. Ploss can’t get over it! His own “büro” is a melancholy place. The old consulting-room, formerly spruce and gay, has become a mere empty loft since he took possession. Herr Gott Sakrament! Hang these Frenchmen!
After dinner the medical officers, especially MM. Langlois, Romant, and Bouvat, come to No. 46. We draw back the curtains. We stretch a string across the room to serve as net, and for an hour we give ourselves up to the joys of chamber-tennis, using our hands as rackets. It is for this reason that the new consulting-room has received the imposing name of Salle du Jeu de Paume. Sometimes, also, it is designated “la chambre des huiles,” das Oelenzimmer.
Poor Ploss. He cannot get the better of these Frenchmen. He would like to see them yielding, to see them cringe beneath his rod, to see them thoroughly miserable. And yet, whatever he can do, despite their hunger and their fits of the blues, they are cheerful. They sing, they decorate their prison. They are always finding new devices. If they have no tools, they make some. They work unceasingly in wood and stone. All the casemates have tables now, stools, chairs, lockers, water-kegs, draughts, and chessmen. Guiton d’Ancenis and Robert le Bordelais are neither smiths nor carpenters, and yet No. 26 is well furnished. They had no spoons; they “forged” some out of old “bully-beef” tins. They had no forks, but they have cut some from the birches on the slopes. To economize matches, they have made a float-light. To save their fingers from the heat of the boiling soup when it is poured into their bowls, they have fashioned wickerwork saucers. Almost all of them had been compelled to give up their knives; lengths of iron cask-hoop, patiently hammered straight and sharpened, have supplied the lack. Their windows are decorated with tiny pine-trees, planted in herring-boxes. They hope to take them home and grow them in France.
Do what he could, Ploss has not been able to stamp out this creative fervour. He knows it, and it infuriates him. Oh, if he had but been commandant! How he would have hunted down without mercy all those concerned in the underground traffic, in the great commercial enterprises by which our illicit supply of provisions has been gradually centralized. There are two such enterprises, and thanks to the competition between them we have for some weeks been securing, at stable and almost reasonable prices, supplementary rations of inestimable value. With what joy he would compel Marin and Brissard to shut up shop, two men who, with a chance armamentarium, have in kitchen No. 42 established a flourishing foundry of tin rings. And Crussol, who puts the finishing touches to the stones which are prepared for him by a whole squad of drillers and escutcheoners, and who has secured a reputation and customers even among the officers at the Ingolstadt headquarters. How promptly would he be dislodged from his niche in the northern parapet, where he works all day in any weather, squatting and mute like a second Paphnuce.
But, thank goodness, though Ploss can restrict as much as he pleases the meagre governmental rations (and he does not fail to make use of his opportunities in this respect), his jurisdiction does not pass beyond the limits of the storerooms and the kitchens. Throughout the rest of the fort the major reigns supreme, and his regime is so strictly courteous that even the most ill-conditioned among the non-commissioned officers of the guard think twice before ordering any of us strict arrest on bread and water.