“I am sure,” said Lacour, “that if I had found one of these delicate packets on the street, I should have thought that it had been dropped from some lady’s vanity bag, or by some careless clerk from a perfumery shop . . . anything but an explosive! And with this trifle that looks as if it were made for the lips, it is possible to blow up an edifice!” . . .
As they continued their visit of investigation, they came upon a partially destroyed round tower in the highest part of the mountain. This was the most dangerous post. From it, an officer was examining the enemy’s line in order to gauge the correctness of the aim of the gunners. While his comrades were under the ground or hidden by the branches, he was fulfilling his mission from this visible point.
A short distance from the tower a subterranean passageway opened before their eyes. They descended through its murky recesses until they found the various rooms excavated in the ground. One side of the mountain cut in points formed its exterior facade. Narrow little windows, cut in the stone, gave light and air to these quarters.
An old commandant in charge of the section came out to meet them. Desnoyers thought that he must be the floorwalker of some big department store in Paris. His manners were so exquisite and his voice so suave that he seemed to be imploring pardon at every word, or addressing a group of ladies, offering them goods of the latest novelty. But this impression only lasted a moment. This soldier with gray hair and near-sighted glasses who, in the midst of war, was retaining his customary manner of a building director receiving his clients, showed on moving his arms, some bandages and surgical dressings within his sleeves, He was wounded in both wrists by the explosion of a shell, but he was, nevertheless, sticking to his post.
“A devil of a honey-tongued, syrupy gentleman!” mused Don Marcelo. “Yet he is undoubtedly an exceptional person!”
By this time, they had entered into the main office, a vast room which received its light through a horizontal window about ten feet wide and only a palm and a half high, reminding one of the open space between the slats of a Venetian blind. Below it was a pine table filled with papers and surrounded by stools. When occupying one of these seats, one’s eyes could sweep the entire plain. On the walls were electric apparatus, acoustic tubes and telephones—many telephones.
The Commandant sorted and piled up the papers, offering the stools with drawing-room punctilio.
“Here, Senator Lacour.”
Desnoyers, humble attendant, took a seat at his side. The Commandant now appeared to be the manager of a theatre, preparing to exhibit an extraordinary show. He spread upon the table an enormous paper which reproduced all the features of the plain extended before them—roads, towns, fields, heights and valleys. Upon this map was a triangular group of red lines in the form of an open fan; the vertex represented the place where they were, and the broad part of the triangle was the limit of the horizon which they were sweeping with their eyes.
“We are going to fire at that grove,” said the artilleryman, pointing to one end of the map. “There it is,” he continued, designating a little dark line. “Take your glasses.”