“It seemed to me as if we had just saved the whole of France and had done something that other men could not have done, something simple and really patriotic.  I shall never forget that little face, you may be sure; and if I had to give my opinion about abolishing drums, trumpets and bugles, I should propose to replace them in every regiment by a pretty girl, and that would be even better than playing the ’Marseillaise:  By Jove! it would put some spirit into a trooper to have a Madonna like that, a live Madonna, by the colonel’s side.”

He was silent for a few moments and then continued, with an air of conviction, and nodding his head: 

“All the same, we are very fond of women, we Frenchmen!”

MOTHER SAUVAGE

Fifteen years had passed since I was at Virelogne.  I returned there in the autumn to shoot with my friend Serval, who had at last rebuilt his chateau, which the Prussians had destroyed.

I loved that district.  It is one of those delightful spots which have a sensuous charm for the eyes.  You love it with a physical love.  We, whom the country enchants, keep tender memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain pools, certain hills seen very often which have stirred us like joyful events.  Sometimes our thoughts turn back to a corner in a forest, or the end of a bank, or an orchard filled with flowers, seen but a single time on some bright day, yet remaining in our hearts like the image of certain women met in the street on a spring morning in their light, gauzy dresses, leaving in soul and body an unsatisfied desire which is not to be forgotten, a feeling that you have just passed by happiness.

At Virelogne I loved the whole countryside, dotted with little woods and crossed by brooks which sparkled in the sun and looked like veins carrying blood to the earth.  You fished in them for crawfish, trout and eels.  Divine happiness!  You could bathe in places and you often found snipe among the high grass which grew along the borders of these small water courses.

I was stepping along light as a goat, watching my two dogs running ahead of me, Serval, a hundred metres to my right, was beating a field of lucerne.  I turned round by the thicket which forms the boundary of the wood of Sandres and I saw a cottage in ruins.

Suddenly I remembered it as I had seen it the last time, in 1869, neat, covered with vines, with chickens before the door.  What is sadder than a dead house, with its skeleton standing bare and sinister?

I also recalled that inside its doors, after a very tiring day, the good woman had given me a glass of wine to drink and that Serval had told me the history of its people.  The father, an old poacher, had been killed by the gendarmes.  The son, whom I had once seen, was a tall, dry fellow who also passed for a fierce slayer of game.  People called them “Les Sauvage.”