"Gun platform can be laid out on spur mountain, 250 feet above present shelter trenches. Will command bridge-head of Aramon—possibly also rebel headquarters."
I saw Keller Bey turn pale to the lips. He understood well enough. He had campaigned against those same invisible, tireless French engineers for many desperate African years, and he knew that in the long run they always made out to do the task set for them.
But Raoux the cobbler-procureur was quite unmoved.
"They are playing with levels and angle-machines as they used to do when I was at Avignon. They went out every day clean and came back dirty. The colonel could find nothing better for them to do. To-morrow we shall send half a column of ours and shoot a few. Then the rest will keep further up the river where they belong."
"As you will," said Keller Bey, "but you had better send a battalion at least with provisions for three days."
"Provisions for three days—absurd nonsense!" foamed the little man, for this was touching his tenderest spot, "our citizen soldiers are the National Guard of Aramon, and will not consent to sleep away from their houses, not for all the wig-wagging engineers and railway signalling in France! We are not slaves but freemen. No, no, a day's excursion to brush away these impudent land surveyors with a volley from our patriotic rifles—and then back again before dark with victory on our untarnished banners—that is what you can expect from the lion hearts of our young men. We defend the Commune. We do not make war outside it. And why should we when the chief strength of the enemy remains unassaulted and untaken within our walls?"
Keller Bey called off the ex-engineer. With such a war method as that which was evidently popular in Aramon, it was no use wasting time reading semaphore messages.
The Chief and I returned very mournfully to the Mairie. I could see that his reflections were bitter.
"They do not understand the Commune or what it means—they do not know the spirit of the Internationale here. They care nothing except for their little municipal quarrels. They cherish wild, vague hopes about the works, and would attack the man upon whose charity they are living. But of the fact that France will one day speak to them with a voice of authority—nay, is now speaking in warning—to that they will pay no heed. At the Commune meeting to-day a whole day was wasted arguing for or against an extra duty on potatoes when brought across the bridge from the Protestant department of the Deux Rives. Protestant potatoes, Catholic and Roman potatoes! What irony, when the dusky signal-men are crawling from hill to hill ever nearer, and any day may bring our doom upon us!"
I let it sink well in, for I could see that Keller Bey was at last conscious of the mistake he had made.