It must have been a lonely life that young Joffre led—but we have no direct evidence that he ever felt lonely. His books and his day dreams seem always to have made up for a lack of human companionship. The other fellows contented themselves with saying of him: "He is too slow, and methodical to amount to much."
He did not, indeed, make a specially brilliant record in his entrance examinations to the Polytechnique; but his stumbling block was not mathematics or science, it was—German! He never could abide the language!
Joseph Joffre entered this famous military training school in 1869, at the age of seventeen. Within a few months the school course was broken up by the German invasion, and Joffre with other cadets promptly volunteered for service. Much to the delight of his family, he was made a second lieutenant, attached to the Engineering Corps. His first practical field work was in throwing up fortifications in defence of Paris. But the Germans were not to be stopped by Joffre in their march on the French capital at this time. That was reserved for a later day and another war.
The short but terrible conflict of 1870 over, Joffre returned to college, and graduated therefrom in 1872, with the rank of full lieutenant. One of his classmates of this time was Ferdinand Foch, but if the two future Marshals there became acquainted no story of their meeting has come down to us.
Joffre's first work at fort building had been so well done that immediately upon graduation the government set him to work. The memory of the stinging German defeat was with them stirring them to action. They wanted defenses everywhere. Joffre was employed upon them at Paris, Versailles, Montpellier, and even in faraway Brittany—until he was disposed to grumble at his fate.
"This is all very fine," he said; "but I don't want to spend the rest of my days building forts. I want to command troops and see some real fighting."
It was the Caesar cropping up in him again.
Without question he was a born builder of fortifications. One day the great Marshal MacMahon came by on a tour of inspection, and was much delighted with a series of defenses he had built near Paris.
"I congratulate you, Monsieur le Capitaine!" he said.
By one sentence he had promoted the young lieutenant to a captaincy.