"Oh yes, I am pleased."
That, to be sure, was clear from his appearance, and I bade him good-bye with a smile, wishing him the luck to win that splendid medal, that most splendid of all medals, which is fastened with a yellow ribbon bordered with green. I had indeed no foreboding that I had just shaken his hand for the last time.
What insinuating perseverance he had brought to bear in order that he might get to the Front, for his father, though to be sure he would have made no attempt to keep him back, had a horror of doing anything to force on his destiny, and only yielded step by step, glad of heart, yet at the same time in agony at seeing his boy's splendid spirit developing so rapidly.
First of all he had to let him volunteer; then when the boy was chafing with impatience in the dépôts where our sons are trained for the firing-line he had to obtain permission for him to leave before his turn. The commander-in-chief, who had welcomed him with pleasure, had wished to keep him by his side, but he protested, gently but firmly, on the occasion of a visit his father paid to the general headquarters.
"I feel too much sheltered here, which is absurd considering the name I bear. Ought I not, on the contrary, to set an example?"
And with a sudden return to that childlike gaiety which he had had the exquisite grace to preserve, hidden under his soldier's uniform, he added with the smile of old days:
"Besides, papa, as the son of the Three Years' Service Bill, it is up to me to do at least three times as much of it as anyone else."
His father, need I say, understood—understood with all his heart—understood so well that, divided between pride and distress, he asked immediately that the boy might be sent to Alsace.
And he had scarcely arrived yonder—at Thann, on the day of a bombardment—when a senseless volley of Germany shrapnel, whence it came none knew, without any military usefulness, and simply for the pleasure of doing harm, shattered him like a thing of no account. He had no time to do "thrice as much as anyone else," alas no! In less than a minute that young life, so precious, so tenderly cherished, was extinguished for ever.
Four others, companions of his dream of glory, fell at his side, killed by the same shell, and the next day they were all committed to the care of that earth of Alsace which had once more become French.