She had a dazed look. The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Of course he's going! At the age of twenty-seven! My dear Mathilde, you don't seem to have any idea...."
She acknowledged frankly that she did indeed understand nothing.... But when I had told her again that in three days' time I was going to report myself at F——, whence I should be sent to fight, she seemed thunder-struck, poor soul! I should never have suspected her of being so fond of me; she had known me ever since I was quite tiny, and I was the son of her poor lost Blanche, one of her own people, a blood relation, and dearer to her than her son-in-law, I could see ... she began to bewail herself, cursing the relentless fate against our family. The doctor had to cut it short, a little sharply:
"Look here, don't discourage the boy!"
I was not displeased when she stopped talking; too much attention always worried me; moreover it occurred to me—a false, but unpleasant impression—that I was making an unfair appeal to her compassion.
During dessert, while my uncle was uncorking a bottle of wine, I studied the railway-guide. The 6:50 train ought to get me to Paris at four o'clock, but the time-tables would probably all be upset. It would be wiser to be at the station from six o'clock onwards, and to wait.
My cousin sympathised:
"You'll have to be up very early."
We drank to the health of our relations with much feeling; examining myself stealthily in a looking-glass, I decided—I was a little heated—that I already had a martial air about me.
"Are you a corporal, anyhow?" the doctor asked me.