Then, I do like many of the comrades my fellow-prisoners, try to do some work upon Bavarian stone, to make a souvenir of the fort, but I have no patience and chuck the thing away, for it does not take my thoughts off?
Good biz! a friend in the room has a pack of cards and we begin to play game after game of manilla, this turns our thoughts a bit but its not as good as the old games we used to play in the taverns of the old Couzonnais quarter. In spite of all I think of everyone I left behind me in that old town, of my dear employers, of their old parents who was so good to me and also of the dear parents of my dear girl who is never out of my thoughts and who I hope she thinks much of me.
Thursday, October 1st. Having been one day without writing I hasten to quickly write these two words, these moments are so sweet for me besides to write one is obliged to be alone and that is why to-day finding myself at the top of the fort where I look over all the plane and at the end of it the fine town of Ingolstadt I see many factory chimnies which are smoking also the fields where some Bavarian peasants is working in this place one would never think, seeing the sight which is spread beneath my eyes, one would never think that canon are thundering a few(?) kilometres away. All that I have written on this page makes me feel sick at heart for outside this cursed fort there would be liberty and peace for always. For such a life as we have been living, everyone of us here, is not to be envied. After a war like that we are going through, just as much for the german people as for the French, there is ruin for the 2 countries where are killed or wounded numerous fathers of families who leaves a wife without support with one or more children! I have not yet the rite to be mourned like these fathers of families, but in spite of everything I think much of my life in the future when I hope to be able to make the girl I love happy and whom I hope will not desert me even though she gets no news of me. Here then is the month of October begining very sadly I live in hope that the end will be a little better.
There, it is not very grand, but it is so sincere, and in any case this work of the pen makes the time pass less heavily. Poetizing, music, memoirs, tobogganing, little dinners, German, cards, whittling, stone-carving—some of the prisoners find the days too short. What an odd creature is man!
Tesson came to see me just now, bringing his last piece of work, a great slab of stone depicting the entrance to Fort Orff. The whole kitchen staff formed up in circle round the masterpiece. “Well I’m blowed!” said Devèse. “That’s not been done with the point of a pickaxe,” remarked Deschênes by way of praise. I also expressed my admiration. Then the master drew from his pocket a book with clasps, cut in limestone. He had carved on it the title: Les Mémoires de Victor Tesson, prisonnier de guerre, à sa méchante Louise Huber.—Dolomieu, Isère. While I was praising the dedication, he showed me his tools, saying: “Here are my cold chisel and my piercer. I made them out of my bicycle pliers. Here’s my ruler; I ‘forged’ it out of the tyre of a wheelbarrow.”—“Is that all?”—“That’s all. I have no dividers; I measure with a straw.”
Unquestionably the Frenchman is a very live animal. When I hear my fellow-prisoners applauding the artistes of No. 7, Lannessan, Grignon, Saint-Lanne, Bouquet, or the “artistes socialistes” of No. 38, the members of the audience splitting their sides with laughter at the satirical allusions and joining lustily in the choruses; when I go to No. 13 to visit Le Second, who receives me with the affected airs of a dandy as he ushers me into his domain of five feet square, incredibly elegant and quaint, fitted up à la Martine; when I contemplate the roguish gaiety of all these “Gavroches,” their indefatigable activity, the effervescence of their wit—I think of a Swiss friend of mine who is always saying, “These devils of Frenchmen!” I can even understand the stupefaction of that great barrel of a Max! One will never get the better of these fellows. One will never bend such bodies beneath the yoke of servitude. Without violence, by the simple play of their natural life, they would tame the most mulish of masters. The substance of which they are composed, ever radiating energy, is irreducible. It is evident that, by special privilege, they are born “free men.” Sovereign people!
How right is Péguy when he says that their watchword is “Hope.” Misfortune befalls them; they seem overwhelmed. From disorganization they pass to grumbling and from grumbling to revolution. Come back to look at them to-morrow; you will find them valiant, dashing, light-hearted heroes recking no longer of yesterday. They laugh at their sufferings. They sing. They defy their gollywogs of gaolers. They combine to think out some new plan. They engage in some fresh piece of work. Merely to look at them renews the savour of life.
At first everything went amiss here. Apart from eating our starvation rations, we had nothing to do. It was a terrible time. But contemplate them now; they are blithe enough. They are prisoners, and yet you would say they were in their own homes, masters, owners. Prisoners? They seem to be the guardians of their sentries; they go so far as to chide the sentries if these are slovenly in the performance of their duties. It is not that the prisoners have adapted themselves to the environment, but that they have forced the environment, willy nilly, to adapt itself to them. Like certain mosses which grow where there is no humus, they catch flying grains of dust and force these to yield the scanty soil which will enable them to live.
Moreover, events seem to favour this natural propensity to hope.
The last thing was your card with a picture of the Victory of Samothrace. You had erased the title and put a date in its place. Every one came to see this bulletin of victory which I had put up beside your portrait! I wish you could have heard the comments.