Controlling his mount, the colonel looked round on us proudly, and began to harangue us.
I listened. I had come in a sarcastic frame of mind. What could he say that would not be stale or commonplace?
Indeed I had foreseen this issue of ready-made phrases on the decisive importance of the struggle upon which we were embarking; it was a question of safeguarding our country and our lives against a nation which was becoming a menace to the human race.... But the inflections of a manly voice conferred a certain grandeur on the hackneyed theme.
"A fine actor," I repeated to myself. "More and more like Dumény!"
I tried, like this, to avoid being carried away, then I began to give in. I admitted that a certain beauty resulted from the perfect harmony between his words and their object. I read in the men's face the revelation of a virtue, until now unknown even to them. For the first time I had the intuition that these peasants and working-men and bourgeois, for the most part doltish, narrow-minded beings, would, if certain chords in them were touched, be capable of great things....
And what about me? Oh! I should be an on-looker as usual! That would be quite enough for me.
The colonel concluded:
"Now, my friends, you are about to march past your Colours. They are new, they have not been under fire, they do not bear the names of glorious victories in their folds like their seniors of the 1st.... Well, it is for us to dower them."
A thrill ran through the ranks, then the whole mass stood like stone. The bugles sounded the vehement, tragic call which always shakes me physically.