"Sous la république, mon capitaine," he replied with dignity, "on est libre."
Free! free to work sixty hours a week for twenty years and then to march off to a war not of his making with but twelve francs in his pocket, leaving a wife and three children behind him to starve!
Like most Frenchmen of his class Henry was thrifty to a degree; I doubt if he spent sixpence a week on himself. With the blind faith of a child he one day confided his savings to me because he was afraid the Germans might search him. By their regulations he was only allowed to have ten marks in his possession at once—the surplus he was supposed to deposit with the paymaster. But I really think he would rather have thrown the money away than done so. He kept a five-franc piece sewn in the lining of his trousers "in case," he informed me, "we get separated when the war is over. Of course you would send me the rest, but when I get back to France I must be able to celebrate my return."
Each week he used to add to the little hoard which I kept for him, knowing not only the total but even what actual coins were there.
Upon occasions he could be courtesy itself. One day a Russian officer came into our room at a moment when Henry was standing idly by the table looking at the pictures in an English magazine. The Russian, mistaking him for a French officer, saluted, bowed, and held out his hand. An English private would have been embarrassed—not so Henry. With that true politeness which always endeavours to prevent others from feeling uncomfortable he returned the salute and the bow and shook the proffered hand! Could tact have gone further?
On Christmas Day we gave him a box of fifty cigars. He was immensely touched and overwhelmingly grateful. Tears sprang to his eyes as he told us that he had never had so many cigars before—even in France.
"Avec ça," he exclaimed, fingering the box, "je serai content pour un an," and he insisted with charming grace, that we should each accept one then and there.
His musical talent was discovered when some one received a concertina from England. Coming into the room suddenly on the following morning I surprised Henry sitting upon my bed giving what was a quite passable rendering of "Tipperary." In no way abashed, he remained where he was, only ceasing to play for a moment to tell me that the concertina was too small—a toy, in fact. The truth was, I rather think, that his enormous fingers found difficulty in pressing less than two stops at once. He admitted that he had a passion for music, that he had learnt the harmonium from a blind man in Commines, and that he had had an accordion specially made for him in Belgium at a cost of 260 francs which had taken him years to save. He was inclined to turn up his nose at catchy airs and music-hall songs, preferring what he called la grande musique, by which I think he meant opera. Eventually he was given the concertina as a present and went off delighted—doing no more work that day.
The optimism with which Henry had begun his prison life gradually faded away. At one time he was certain that he would be home for Christmas, then for Easter; finally I think he had resigned himself to remaining where he was for life. It was his habit to believe implicitly every rumour that he heard; and since there were seldom less than fifty new ones current every day, he had a busy time retailing them, and was, in consequence, always either buoyed up with false hope or weighed down with unnecessary despair.
But it was at about the end of December that he began to get anxious and worried. Up till then he had been more or less content. His was not a super-martial spirit; he did not pine to be "at them" again nor did he chafe under the restrictions of a life of confinement. He confessed frankly that he was not anxious to fight again, but that when his day's work (!) was done he enjoyed sitting by the stove in the stable "avec les camarades" (the servants lived in the stables) "tandis que chacun raconte sa petite histoire de la guerre."