"It's being shut up in this apartment, where I have too many sorrowful thoughts to disturb me," he said to himself; and he went out, to try to conquer his weakness by walking.
He employed the last hours of the afternoon in paying farewell visits. But they did not give him, after such a succession of violent shocks, the peace of mind which he was very near requiring physically. He might have measured the extent of the change wrought in him during those few weeks, by this trivial fact: during that last walk from one end to the other of the town where he had done his last garrison duty, he did not feel a moment's nostalgia for the profession to which he had been so attached. One anxiety overtopped everything else, of the same nature as that which he had undergone before the telegram came, and had tried to shake off: to ascertain whether the news of the infamous will had reached the ears of his comrades, and what they thought of it.
Landri had heard vaguely long ago that Major Privat was a distant cousin of Jaubourg. He had no sooner set foot on the sidewalk than he remembered it. That officer had retired the previous winter. He had certainly continued to correspond with some of his comrades in arms. Had he written them the news, and if so, with what comments? In that case what interpretation would those straightforward, simple hearts, whose uncompromising loyalty he knew, place upon M. de Claviers' acceptance?
Such an idea was not of the sort that permits the intrusion of others. In vain did the pictures of military activity on the streets of Saint-Mihiel multiply themselves about the cashiered lieutenant, as if to remind him of his youthful dreams and their destruction. He paid no heed to them. Thus he was able to pass, without being suffocated with despair, the headquarters gate, which he had entered only the other day with the firm determination to retain his uniform. He met, without a tearing at his heart-strings, several troopers of his former command, led by his successor, who was mounted on Panther herself, become in those few weeks a docile and spirited cavalry mare. He recognized Baudoin's insolent and sneering profile, and Teilhard's face, already less frank and open, evidently recaptured by anarchistic influences. That is one of the bitterest pangs that a real leader of men can feel,—to see the living tool that he has hoped, and has begun, to shape, go astray in other hands. Landri was hardly moved by it. On the other hand, he was intensely relieved to find that neither Despois nor Vigouroux, the first two officers whom he called upon, had the slightest suspicion of the legacy left to the Claviers by Privat's cousin. He had the courage to mention the former major's name to both of them. Plainly, they had not thought of him for months. They had many other cares in their heads, which they both poured into his ears, each after his manner.
"So you are lost to the army," said Despois. "Such an excellent officer—what a pity! I blame most the wretches who are governing us, for not understanding that, especially among us, a man cannot be replaced. A man! When they have one who wants to serve, they ought to do everything to keep him. In a campaign, one man is worth ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred, yes, a thousand others! One would think that our tyrants were afflicted with a vertigo that impels them to eliminate from the army the men of heart, that is to say, the loyalists, the men from whom their Republic has least to fear. The officer who refuses, as you did, to break down a chapel door, is the officer who doesn't conspire, because he has scruples, and those fools don't comprehend it!—I, too," he added, "I shall leave, and very soon. I don't think that I can stand it. Yesterday they made us march against the churches, to-morrow we shall be called upon for a campaign against the strikers. That is no more a soldier's work than the other. The army may be employed, in exceptional cases, to see that the laws are executed. But it must be one of the exceptional cases. The reason for the existence of the army is war, not police duty. Our politicians have a horror of war, of that manly and sanctified school of heroism. They have the degraded taste for armed demonstrations in the streets. Look you, they are talking of sending us next week to adjust matters at the forges of Apremont.—For heaven's sake, gentlemen, give us a policy of internal peace and of proud dignity externally!—Adieu, Claviers. I wish that we may meet again, you can guess where; foot to foot, charging the enemy. But will there still be any cavalry to follow us?—I am wrong. We have no right to despair, so near Vaucouleurs. What can you expect? It breaks your old captain's heart to see you go away."
"Well! so they've slit your ears, my dear Claviers!" Such was Vigouroux's first exclamation. "Ah! the—" And the lieutenant of dragoons, who adhered to the great traditions of the Klébers and Cambronnes, hurled a mess-room epithet at his comrade's persecutors. "Do you know that the same thing came near happening to me? And why? Because I exchanged two or three words with you when we dismounted on our return from Hugueville. Gad! they didn't waste any time. That same afternoon the colonel sent for me.—'Is it true that you congratulated Monsieur de Claviers in public?' he asked me.—'I did talk with Claviers,' I replied, 'but privately, when we were off duty; and if anybody claims to have been present at our interview, he lies.'—Charbonnier hesitated a moment. For all that he has the ideas that you know of, he's a good fellow. And then, Vigouroux, Charbonnier—those names have a similar sound, whereas Claviers-Grandchamp—However, 'I'll let it pass this time,' he said. 'But be less talkative, young man. You may fall in with another colonel than me.'—That's all there was to it. You see, two minutes' conversation, and we were spied upon. It poisons life. Claviers, to be surrounded by blackguards. It spoils the cooking at the mess, which really hasn't been so bad this year. I can't eat without talking, and no one dares to speak at the table now. If all the good men like you, the staunch ones, should disappear, what would become of us? But no matter, Charbonnier and his curs may say what they please, I congratulate you again, and I authorize you to say everywhere that Vigouroux cried 'bravo' twice over."
So Privat had not written! That was the whole significance, to their former comrade, of the words of the two officers, one so distinguished by nature, the other so simple-hearted, both equally attached to the service and wounded to the quick in their military honor by abominable orders. Later Landri was destined to see very often in his thoughts the sad and honest glance of Despois in its deeply lined mask, and the jovially disgusted lip—if one may say so—of the ruddy-visaged Vigouroux. At the moment there was no place in his heart for sensations of that sort.
His other visits passed off with the same alternations of painful curiosity and comparative—but only momentary—relief.
The anticipation of the interview with M. de Claviers—the third since he had known what he knew—consumed him with too fierce a fever. It increased constantly as the minutes passed that brought him nearer to the time when he would find himself face to face with him. Again, as in the ride at the head of his dragoons to Hugueville-en-Plaine, he seemed to see him and only him—only him on the railway platform, where very few of his friends had the courage to come to bid him adieu; only him in the carriage, where, lulled by the monotonous rumbling of the train, he tried to imagine the words he was about to hear and those that he would say in reply, endlessly and anxiously; only him, finally, in Paris, where, as he stood in Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, before the door of their house, his suffering acquired fresh intensity. He had not crossed the threshold since the day when, coming from Saint-Mihiel by train, he had gone there to dress, before going to Valentine's to ask for her hand. That was the day before Charles Jaubourg's death!
Everything indicated that the manner of life in that seignorial mansion was still as he had always known it. The old concierge saluted him from his doorway with the same deferential and familiar expression. The same stablemen, with the same gestures, were splashing pails of water on the wheels of the same carriages. Garnier, the maître-d'hôtel, whose white hair gave him a powdered aspect, received him with the same ceremony at the top of the steps, when his arrival had been announced by the same bell.