D'ARTAGNAN AND THE SOUL OF FRANCE
I met d'Artagnan in a forest of Lorraine. Perhaps Athos, Porthos and Aramis were there too, somewhere in the shadows. I saw only d'Artagnan and talked with him as long as it takes to tell the story. I had forgotten how he looked to Dumas père, but I knew him at once by his bearing and his spirit. His swashbuckling manners are just as arrogantly gay now in the forest of Lorraine and in the trenches of the Vosges as they were long ago in old Paris and on the highroad. He swaggers just as buoyantly with the "poilus" of the Republic as with the musketeers of the Cardinal.
D'Artagnan is a captain now; when I met him he was attached to the staff of a General of Brigade. He is always your beau ideal of a man. He looks just what he is—a fine French soldier.
My first glimpse of him was from the automobile in which I was riding with an officer from the Great General Staff whose business it was to conduct press correspondents to the front. D'Artagnan was walking towards us on the lonely forest road, and signaled with a long alpenstock for our driver to stop. He wore the regulation blue uniform, with the three gold stripes of a captain on his sleeve. He had no sword. I find that swords are no longer the fashion with the "working officers" at the front. They are in the way.
Our car slid to a stop. D'Artagnan's free hand came to salute. It was an imposing salute—one that only d'Artagnan could have made. His heels snapped together with a gallant click of spurs; his arm swept up in a semi-circle from his body; his rigid fingers touched the visor of his steel helmet—one of the new battle helmets, very light, strong and painted horizon blue to match the uniform. The chin strap was of heavy black leather instead of the brass chain of ante-bellum parade helmets.
D'Artagnan, from the center of the road, roared out his name and mission. His name, in his present reincarnation, is known throughout the French army, in fact throughout France. It is known to the Germans too, but correspondents are not permitted to give the names of their officers until the war is over. Anyway I immediately recognized him as d'Artagnan.
His mission, announced with gusto, was to guide us along the lines held by his brigade. He leaped to our running-board and ordered our chauffeur to advance.