Then Guillaumin and I went to swell a group which had formed in a corner, round Fortin, who was holding forth.
A robust fellow, with an enormous forehead, and a clever, ugly face, he was repeating the lessons he had just brought back from Germany where he had been living for some time. His rich voice carried wonderfully, supported by his energetic gestures. A frequenter of public meetings and debating societies, one was tempted to forgive him if he was rather inclined to like the sound of his own voice, because he spoke well.
To begin with, however, I only half listened to him. He was enlarging upon the industrial qualities of that race, their method, and patience, and tenacity of purpose, their thoroughness in perfecting detail; on their moral virtues too, from which the others sprang.
This sort of thing had been overdone! However at such a time it assumed a striking note of unexpectedness and daring. This Frenchman obviously overflowed with sympathy, or at all events admiration for the foe he was about to face.... And not one of us protested.... What impartiality, I thought. Was it to our credit, or discredit?
I now followed the speaker's arguments with interest. He occasionally spoke so decidedly and precisely that I suspected him of dishing up for our benefit certain passages already composed for the work he was meditating.
On the other hand one had the feeling that one was not the dupe of a rhetorician. I was able when necessary to verify the exactitude of his statements by my own recollections.
Here he was sketching the portrait of the young German, steady and strong, accustomed from his earliest childhood to long walks with his pack on his back, his first attempts at warlike frolics, keen on swimming, shooting, and gymnastics, more sporting in reality than we were who had been won over to the rough games from over the channel. They were chaste too and had no false shame about admitting it; not exhausted, depraved, and indeed contaminated, as a result of the stupid dissipation which we appear to think necessary for our young men. I could see the companions of my excursions round Iéna again,—Otto Kraëmer, merry, affectionate, and untiring—and so virtuous—questioning me with an innocent smile, quite free of any suspicion of envy, on the pleasures of Paris.
Fortin showed us how war had become inevitable for these people. Since they were suffocating at home! They were a prolific race; that was their foremost merit. The necessity and also the capacity for expansion in a country which in forty years doubles its population! There was the fruitful young sap. To them belonged the future.
We were listening, silent and engrossed, leaning on our elbows.... Ladmiraut demanded some detail from time to time. He had pulled out his note-book. Guillaumin, who was beside me, seemed to be the only one who could not listen to this language without impatience; he strummed nervously on the marble table-top.