He twirled his moustache.
"Really! You too, you too! You look at things like that?"
I had him—I had led him on to the point from which I knew he would launch out.
"If the worst came to the worst, and Paris was stormed, there would only be one thing for us, the troops collected here, to do. That would be to stick in the trenches covering the approach to the forts, and be killed, down to the last man!... For that matter I think they'd be in a bit of a hole with our army on their flank. But that's not at all the position. For four days, Dreher, four days you understand, their new objective has been visible. They are inclining towards the south-east. They are set on surrounding all our forces in the field. Under these circumstances, I think—it seems to me—that a decisive movement...."
This time he threw restraint to the winds. He began by explaining all he had been able to follow of the operations since the beginning. In a lump, of course, but how much I valued that first sight I had had of things as a whole, at a time when I was sighing after light from the depths of my ignorance. It was in vain that I had instinctively put myself on guard against the pretensions of an officer in a subordinate position. I was forced to admire the masterly way in which he stated the facts, the precision and lucidity of his words, which would have made of him a remarkable professor of military history. He summed up for me, in a few words, the action in the North which until then had been shrouded in a thick mist for me. Our premature offensive, the strength of the German right under Von Kluck exceeding all expectations—our English Allies overcome in spite of heroic efforts—the enemy's wing set in motion and hurled towards Paris by forced marches which it was impossible to hinder in spite of terrible sacrifices—our men falling back, fighting day and night, on to the outskirts of the capital. That was last week's balance sheet. To-day the enemy had given up the idea of Paris, provisionally and was applying the new principle: the search for, and the annihilation of, the hostile armies in the field. It was a far-reaching conception. Just think of the gigantic forces they had hurled into Lorraine too, which had just forced us back in a few days from Sarrebourg and Morhange to the St. Dié-Nancy front. It was a colossal enveloping movement. Our front pierced towards Neufchâteau, as the principal German mass fell back by Châlons—our communications cut, that meant all our forces in the east, and the whole system of our fortified towns caught at one haul, three-quarters of our strength destroyed, the war virtually over.
"Then?" I said panting in spite of myself.
"We have a chance. Will they know how to make use of it? I believe so—First of all, our right must hold out. Castelnau is down there, he is the only man who has held his own. Then you see Von Kluck is clearly leaving Paris on one side. He does not set much store by the place, only sees it in the stake of victory. That is perhaps a mistake, perhaps the mistake. Perhaps our one object was to get him to make that mistake!"
He took a deep breath:
"Dreher, listen to this! If we were in the camp in force—and why shouldn't we be?—if we had had time to concentrate several corps there, a hundred thousand men say, which I believe is the case—if we threw ourselves on their flank, imprudently uncovered—if at that precise instant our other armies made headway against them—if Von Kluck were suddenly to find himself wedged in a vice...."
The captain pulled up short. Was he afraid of having said too much, of having ventured too far in his bold inferences?