Suddenly I felt that the word was going to be uttered; that it was ripe, fertile, bursting; that it was going to spring out of my head—escape—and alight, in turn, on every mouth that was speaking there.
“You cannot,” said M. Briavoine, “ask Frenchmen to accept without question an authority that has no bounds. I will even admit without any shame that our race is the least disciplined in the world.”
“Authority, like alcohol, is a poison which makes man mad,” said a spectacled young man with sharp looks.
“I thoroughly agree,” cried the doctor. “As for discipline....”
A sigh of satisfaction escaped me. It was done. The word had come out, and I saw it disporting itself outside of me with a feeling at once of deliverance and curiosity. I gazed at the celebrated doctor with a very real gratitude. My satisfaction was indeed so great that in spite of my low rank I vigorously nodded to show how completely I agreed with Dr. Briavoine. And approval being always acceptable from any one however insignificant, Dr. Briavoine gave me in passing one of those generous smiles of his that were half-hidden away in his beard.
“Discipline,” he was saying, “is not perhaps a French virtue. But, God be praised! we have others; and our critical spirit alone, so subtle, incisive and delicate, is worth all the heavy qualities of our enemies.”
Doctor Coupé had come in almost unseen in the midst of the general interest. Taken to task by his colleagues, this excellent old man looked like a late-season leaf which the storm was trying to tear away from a bough. For a few seconds he hesitated between his innate terror of authority and his love of mischief. The vehemence of the views, however, that prevailed left him no option; and the dry leaf sped away, swirling in the gale.
“We are ready to shed our blood, if we are called upon,” the doctor said, stating a principle; “but, in God’s name! they should ask us politely.”
“The very least! Manners!” muttered Professor Proby. “I am disciplined enough—on condition ... what?... We ask for some consideration.”
“You know what Dufrêne did, the day before yesterday?” ventured an important-looking person, who was trying by a clever adjustment of his collar and movement of his chin to keep his beard in a horizontal position, and who acquired in this way an air of extraordinary majesty. “Listen then....” And in the middle of a chorus of protestations and laughter he began to tell the latest little scandal invented by imaginations which are not content with the reading of the communiqués of those glorious and tragic days.