The motor-car of the Chief of the Medical Staff was coming to a stop in front of the door. It opened like a dry fruit, and shot out its contents on the pavement.
What an impressive personage! He was tall and, it seemed to me, of enormous proportions. A typically military face—no one could mistake it—deep features over which the fingers and the nails of the sculptor must have passed again and again; on the nose, too, the sculptor’s thumb must have been at work, pressing and moulding delicately the lumps of flesh; a bristling white moustache and imperial, of the kind specially reserved for soldiers advanced in age. He wore an old general’s uniform, which many give up with the greatest difficulty, like old ideas. Gold, jewellery, velvet, and silk facings adorned his body with such refulgence that the imagination could hardly conceive that, beneath this barbarous splendour, there were lungs, muscles, bones and a shrivelled skin covered with grey hair.
A look escaped from beneath his bushy eyebrows, which was at once violent, questioning, and suggestive of unutterable pride.
He came forward in grave silence.
I expected a scene; but from that moment what took place has remained mysteriously veiled in my memory.
In one single movement everybody there took up a certain position, and they made a correct military salute according to the rules taught so patiently in barracks to recruits from the country.
Faces imperceptibly became rigid. The light in one’s eyes became dull and fixed. Ten centuries of a habit imposed and accepted petrified tongues, muscles and minds.
Some thistleseed flew away with the breeze. As I saw it fluttering, white, woolly, without weight, I thought—I don’t know why—of that subtle, fine, delicate, critical spirit. It vanished in a gust of wind. A big insect loaded with pollen could be heard buzzing around.
I felt stupid! A long pause; then the white-moustached gentleman decided to let these words fall from his lips:
“Good-day, gentlemen!”