Little Tapin
editHis name was Jean-Marie-Michel Jumière, and the first eighteen years of his life were spent near the little Breton village of Plougastel. They were years of which each was, in every respect, like that which went before, and, in every respect, like that which followed after: years, that is to say, devoid of incident, beyond the annual pardon, when the peasants came from far and near to the quaint little church, to offer their prayers at the cemetery Calvary, and display their holiday costumes, and make love, and exchange gossip on the turf round about. It is a land of wide and wind-swept hillsides, this, imbued with the strange melancholy of a wild and merciless sea, and wherein there are no barriers of convention or artificiality between earth and sky, man and his Maker; but Jean-Marie loved it for its very bleakness. From the doorway of his mother’s cottage, standing, primly white, in the midst of great rocks and strawberry fields, with its thatched roof drawn down, like a hood, about its ears, as if in protection against the western gales, he could look out across the broad harbor of Brest to the Goulet, the gateway to that great Atlantic whose mighty voice came to his ears in stormy weather, muttering against the barrier of the shore. And this voice of the sea spoke to Jean-Marie of many things, but, most of all, of the navies of France, of the mighty battleships which went out from Brest to unimagined lands, far distant, China, America, and the southern islands, whence comrades, older than himself, brought back curious treasures, coral, and shells, and coins, and even parrots, to surprise the good people of Plougastel. He looked at them enviously, as they gathered about the door of Père Yvetot’s wine-shop, when they were home on leave, and spun sailor yarns for his delighted ears. How wonderful they were, these men who had seen the world, — Toulon, and Marseille, and Tonkin, — how wonderful, with their wide, flapping trousers, and their jaunty caps, with a white strap and a red pompon, and their throats and breasts, showing ruddy bronze at the necks of their shirts!
At such times Jean-Marie would join timidly in the talk, and, perhaps, speak of the time when he, too, should be marin français, and see the world. And the big Breton sailors would laugh good-naturedly, and slap him on the shoulder, and say: “Tiens! And how then shall the cruisers find their way into Brest harbor, when the little phare is gone?” For it was a famous joke in Plougastel to pretend that Jean-Marie, with his flaming red hair, was a lighthouse, which could be seen through the Goulet, far, far out at sea.
But Jean-Marie only smiled quietly in reply, for he knew that his day would come. At night, the west wind, sweeping in from the Atlantic, and rattling his little casement, seemed to be calling him, and it was a fancy of his to answer its summons in a whisper, turning his face toward the window.
“All in good time, my friend. All in good time!”
Again, when he was working in the strawberry fields, he would strain his eyes to catch the outline of some big green battleship, anchored off Brest, or, during one of his rare visits to the town, lean upon the railing of the pont tournant, to watch the sailors and marines moving about the barracks and magazines on the quais of the porte militaire. All in good time, my friends; all in good time!
Only, there were two to whom one did not speak of these things, — the Little Mother, and Rosalie Vivieu. Already the sea had taken three from Madame Jumière — Baptiste, her husband, and Philippe and Yves, the older boys, who went out together, with the fishing fleet, seven years before, in the staunch little smack La Belle Fortune. She had been cheerful, even merry, during the long weeks of waiting for the fleet’s return, and, when it came in one evening, with news of La Belle Fortune cut down in the fog by a North Cape German Lloyd, and all hands lost, she had taken the news as only a Breton woman can. Jean-Marie was but twelve at the time, but there is an intuition, beyond all reckoning in years, in the heart of a fisher’s son, and never should he forget how the Little Mother had caught him to her heart that night, at the doorway of their cottage, crying, “Holy Saviour! Holy Saviour!” with her patient blue eyes upturned to the cold, grey sky of Finistère! As for Rosalie, Jean-Marie could not remember when they two had not been sweethearts, since the day when, as a round-eyed boy of six, he had watched Madame Vivieu crowding morsels of blessed bread into her baby mouth at the pardon of Plougastel, since all the world knows that in such manner only can backwardness of speech be cured. Rosalie was sixteen now, as round, and pink, and sweet as one of her own late peaches, and she had promised to marry Jean-Marie some day. For the time being, he was allowed to kiss her only on the great occasion of the pardon, but that was once more each year than any other gars in Plougastel could do, so Jean-Marie was content. No, evidently, to these two there must be no mention of his dreamings of the wide and wonderful sea, of the summons of the impatient western wind, of those long reveries upon the pont tournant.
So Jean-Marie hugged his visions to his heart for another year, working in the strawberry fields, gazing out with longing eyes toward the warships in the harbor, and whispering, when the fingers of the wind tapped upon his little casement: “All in good time, my friend. All in good time!”
And his day came at last, as he had known it would. But with what a difference! For there were many for the navy that spring. Plougastel had nine, and Daoulas fifteen ready, and Hanvec seven, and Crozon twenty-one, and from Landerneau, and Chàteaulin, and Lambezellec, and le Folgoet came fifty more, and from Brest itself, a hundred; and all of these, with few exceptions, were great, broad-shouldered lads, strong of arm and deep of chest, and so the few who were slender and fragile, like Jean-Marie, were assigned to the infantry, and sent, as is the custom, far from Finistère, because, says the code, change of scene prevents homesickness, and what the code says must, of course, be true.
When Madame Jumière heard this she smiled as she was seldom known to smile. The Holy Virgin, then, had listened to her prayers. The gars was to be a piou-piou instead of a col bleu, after all! The great sea should not rob her again, as it had robbed her in the time. It was very well, oh, grace au saint Sauveur, it was very well! And, all that night, the Little Mother prayed, and watched a tiny taper, flickering before her porcelain image of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, while Jean-Marie tossed and turned upon his little garret bed, and made no reply, even in a whisper, to the west wind, rattling his casement with insistent ringers.
But it was all far worse than he had pictured it to himself, even in those first few hours of disappointment and despair. The last Sunday afternoon which he and Rosalie passed, hand in hand, seated by the Calvary in Plougastel cemetery, striving dumbly to realize that they should see each other no more for three long years; the following morning, chill and bleak for that time of year, when he and the Little Mother, standing on the platform of the station at Brest, could barely see each others’ faces, for the sea-fog and their own hot tears; the shouts and laughter and noisy farewells of the classe, crowding out of the windows of their third-class carriages; and, finally, the interminable journey to Paris, — all of these were to Jean-Marie like the successive stages of a feverish, uneasy dream. He knew none of the noisy Breton peasant lads about him, but sat by himself in the centre of the compartment, too far from either window to catch more than fleeting glimpses of the fog-wrapped landscape through which the train crept at thirty kilometres the hour. At long intervals, they stopped in great stations, of which little Jean-Marie remembered to have heard, — Morlaix, St. Brieuc, Rennes, and Laval, where the recruits bought cakes and bottles of cheap wine, and joked with white-capped peasant women on the platforms; and twice during the long night he was roused from a fitful, troubled sleep to a consciousness of raucous voices crying “Le Mans!” and “Chartres!” and gasped in sudden terror — before he could remember where he was — at the faces of his slumbering companions, ghastly and distorted in the wretched light of the compartment lamp. So, as the dawn was breaking over Paris, they came into the gare Montparnasse, and, too drowsy to realize what was demanded of them, were herded together by the drill sergeants in charge, and marched away across the city to the barracks of La Pépinière.
The weeks that followed were to Jean-Marie hideous beyond any means of expression. From the first he had been assigned to the drum-corps, and spent hours daily, under command of a corporal expert in the art, laboriously learning double rolls and ruffles in the fosse of the fortifications. For they are not in the way of enduring martyrdom, the Parisians, and even while they cry “Vive l’armée!” with their hats off, and their eyes blazing, the drummers and buglers are sent out of hearing, to practice the music that later, when the regiments parade, will stir the patriotism of the throng.
But this part of his new life was no hardship to Jean-Marie, or Little Tapin, as his comrades soon learned to call him, because he was the smallest drummer in the corps. On the contrary, it was something to be in the open air, even though that air was tainted with sluggish smoke from the factory chimneys of Levallois-Perret, instead of being swept and refreshed by the west wind from beyond the Goulet. And he was very earnest, very anxious to please, was Little Tapin. First of all the new drummers, he learned the intricacies of the roll, and so diligently did he improve the hours of practice that he was first, as well, to be regularly assigned to a place in the regimental band. No, this was no hardship. What cramped and crushed his kindly little heart, what clouded his queer, quizzical eyes, was nothing less than Paris, beautiful, careless Paris, that laughed, and danced, and sang about him, and had never a thought for Little Tapin, with his funny, freckled face, and his ill-fitting uniform of red and blue, and his coarse boots, and his ineradicable Breton stare.
In Plougastel he had been wont to greet and to be greeted, to hear cheery words from those who passed him on the wide, white roads. He was part of it all, one who was called by his honest name, instead of by a ridiculous sobriquet, and who had his share in all that went forward, from the strawberry harvest to the procession of the pardon. And if all this was but neighborly interest, at least there were two to whom Jean-Marie meant more, and who meant more to him.
But Paris, — Paris, with her throngs of strange faces hurrying past, her brilliantly lighted boulevards, her crowded cafés, her swirl of traffic along avenues that one crossed only at peril of one’s life, — he was lost amid her clamor and confusion as utterly as a bubble in a whirlpool! The bitterest hours of his new life were those of his leave, in which, with a band of his fellows, he went out of the great green gates of the caserne to seek amusement. Amusement! They soon lost Little Tapin, the others, for he was one who did not drink, and who walked straight on when they turned to speak to passing grisettes, who clung to each others’ arms, and looked back, laughing at the sallies of the piou-pious. He was not bon camarade. He seemed to disapprove. So, presently, while he was staring into a shop window, they would slip down a side street, or into a tiny café, and Little Tapin would find himself alone in the great city which he dreaded.
He came to spending long hours of his leave in the galleries of the Louvre, hastening past row upon row of nude statues with startled eyes, or making his way wearily from picture to picture of the old Dutch masters, striving, striving to understand. Then, footsore and heartsick, he would creep out upon the pont du Carrousel, and stand for half an afternoon, with his elbows on the railing. Behind him, the human tide swung back and forward from bank to bank, the big omnibuses making the bridge throb and sway under his feet. It was good, that, like the rise and fall of his little boat on the swells of the bras de Landerneau, when he rowed up with a comrade to fish at the mouth of the Elorn. And there was always the Seine, whirling, brown and angry, under the arches of the pont Royal beyond, on its way to the sea, where were the great, green battleships. Little Tapin strained his eyes in an attempt to follow the river’s long sweep to the left, toward the distant towers of the Trocadéro, and then pictured to himself how it would go on and on, out into the good, green country, past hillsides crowded with vineyards, and broad, flat meadows, where the poplars stood, aligned like soldiers, against the sky, until it broadened toward its end, running swifter and more joyously, for now the wind had met it and was crying, “Come! Come! The Sea! The Sea!” as it was used to cry, rattling the casement of his little room at Plougastel. Then two great tears ran slowly down his freckled cheeks, and dropped, unnoted, into the flying river, wherein so many fall. Ah, what a baby he was, to be sure, Little Tapin!
So three months went by, and then one morning the news ran through La Pépinière that the regiment was going to move. There is no telling how such tidings get abroad, for the pawns are not supposed to know what part in the game they are to play. A loose-tongued lieutenant, perhaps, and a sharp-eared ordonnance, or a word between two commandants overheard by the sentry in his box at the gates of the caserne. Whatever the source of information, certain it was that, six hours after the colonel of the 107th of the line had received his orders, his newest recruit could have told you as much of them as was known to General de Galliffet himself, in his office on the boulevard St. Germain.
A more than usually friendly comrade confided the news to Little Tapin, exulting. The regiment was to move — in three days, name of God! Epatant — what? And, what was more, they were to go to the south, to Grenoble, whence one saw the Alpes Maritimes, with snow upon them — snow upon them, did Tapin comprehend? — and always! No matter whether it was a Tuesday, or a Friday, — yes, or even a Sunday! There was always snow!
No, Little Tapin could hardly comprehend. He pondered dully upon this new development of his fate all that afternoon, and then, suddenly, while he was beating the staccato roll of the retraite in the court of the caserne that night, he understood! Why, it was to go further away, this, — further away from Plougastel, and the Little Mother, and Rosalie, to be stationed in God knew what great town, crueller, more crowded than even Paris herself!
All that night Little Tapin lay staring at the ceiling of the big dortoir, while the comrades breathed heavily around him. And, little by little, the spirit of rebellion roused and stirred in his simple Breton heart. For he hated it all, — this army, this dreary, rigid routine, this contemptuous comment of trim, sneering young lieutenants, with waxed mustaches, and baggy red riding breeches, and immaculately varnished boots. He hated his own uniform, which another tapin had worn before him, and which, in consequence, had never even had the charm of freshness. He hated the bugles, and the drums, — yes, and, more than all, the tricolor, the flag of the great, cruel Republic which had cooped him up in these desolate barracks of La Pépinière, instead of sending him with other Bretons out to the arms of the blue sea! And, when gray morning crept through the windows of the dortoir, there lay upon the pallet of Little Tapin a deserter, in spirit, at least, from the 107th of the line!
That day, for the third time since joining the regiment, Little Tapin was detailed as drummer to the guard at the Palais du Louvre. He knew what that meant, — a long, insufferably tiresome day, with nothing to do save to idle about a doorway of the palace, opposite the place du Palais Royal, watching the throng of shoppers scurrying to and fro, and passing in and out of the big magasins du Louvre. It was only as sunset approached that the drummer of the guard detail had any duty to perform. Then he marched, all alone, with his drum slung on his hip, across the place du Carrousel, and down the wide central promenade of the Tuileries gardens, to the circular basin at their western end, where, on pleasant afternoons, the little Parisians — and some, too, of larger growth — manœuvred their miniature yachts, to the extreme vexation of the sluggish gold-fish. There, standing motionless, like a sketch by Edouard Detaille, he watched the sun creep lower, lower, behind the arc de l’Etoile, until it went out of sight, and then, turning, he marched back, drumming sturdily, to warn all who lingered in the gardens that the gates were about to close.
But they were not good for Little Tapin, those hours of idleness at the portals of the palace. It is the second busiest and most densely thronged spot in Paris, this: first the place de l’Opéra, and then the place du Palais Royal. And to Little Tapin’s eyes, as he glanced up and down the rue de Rivoli, the great city seemed more careless, more cruel than ever, and bit by bit the rebellious impulse born in the dortoir grew stronger, more irresistible. His Breton mind was slow to action, but, once set in a direction, it was obstinacy itself. He took no heed of consequences. If he realized at any stage of his meditation what the outcome of desertion must inevitably be, it was only to put the thought resolutely from him. Capture, court-martial, imprisonment, they were only names to him. What was real was that he should see Plougastel again, sit hand in hand with Rosalie, and refind his comrades, the wide, sunlit harbor, and the impatient western wind, for which his heart was aching. What was false and unbearable was longer service in an army that he loathed.
He arranged the details of escape in his mind, as he sat apart from his comrades of the guard, fingering the drum-cords. An hour’s leave upon the morrow — certainly the tambour-major would grant him so much, if he said it was to bid his sister good-by; then, a change from his detested uniform to a cheap civile in the shop of some second-hand dealer in the Gobelins quarter; and, finally, a quick dash to the gare Montparnasse, when he should have learned the hour of his train, and so, away to Finistère. It sounded extremely simple, as all such plans do, when the wish is father to the thought, and in his calculations he went no further than Plougastel. After that, one would see. So the long afternoon stole past.
At seven o’clock the lieutenant of the guard touched Little Tapin upon the shoulder, and, more by instinct than actual perception, he sprang to his feet and saluted.
“Voyons, mon petit,” said the officer, not unkindly. “It is time thou wast off. Thou knowest thy duty — eh? There is no need of instructions?”
“Oh, ça me connait, mon lieutenant,” answered Little Tapin quaintly, and, presently, he was striding away to his post, under the arc de Triomphe, past the statues, and the flower-beds, and the dancing fountains, across the rue des Tuileries, and so into the wide, central promenade of the gardens beyond.
The old woman who sold cakes, and reglisse, and balloons to the children, was putting up the shutters of her little booth as he passed, and two others were piling wooden chairs in ungainly pyramids under the trees, though the gardens were still full of people, hurrying north and south on the transverse paths leading to the rue de Rivoli or to the quai and the pont de Solférino. But, curiously enough, the open space around the western basin was almost deserted as Little Tapin took his position, facing the great grille.
The mid-August afternoon had been oppressively warm, and now a thin haze had risen from the wet wood pavement of the place de la Concorde, and hovered low, pink in the light of the setting sun. Directly before Little Tapin the obelisk raised its warning finger, and beyond, the Champs Elysées, thickly dotted with carriages, and half veiled by great splotches of ruddy-yellow dust, swept away in a long, upward curve toward the distant arc de l’Etoile.
But of all this Little Tapin saw nothing. He stood very still, with his back to the basin, where the fat goldfish went to and fro like lazy sentinels, on the watch for a possible belated little boy, with a pocket full of crumbs. He was still deep in his dream of Plougastel, so deep that he could almost smell the salt breeze rollicking in from the Goulet, and hear the chapel bell sending the Angelus out over the strawberry fields and the rock-dotted hillside.
After a minute, something — a teamster’s shout, or the snap of a cocher’s whip — roused him, and he glanced around with the same half-sensation of terror with which he had wakened in the night to hear the guards shouting “Le Mans!” and “Chartres!” Then the reality came back to him with a rush, and he grumbled to himself. Oh, it was all very well, the wonderful French army, all very well if one could have been a marshal or a general, or even a soldier of the line in time of war. There was a chance for glory, bon sang! But to be a drummer — a drummer one metre seventy in height, with flaming red hair and a freckled face — a drummer who was called Little Tapin; and to have, for one’s most important duty, to drum the loungers out of a public garden! No, evidently he would desert.
“But why?” said a grave voice beside him.
Little Tapin was greatly startled. He had not thought he was saying the words aloud. And his fear increased when, on turning to see who had spoken, he found himself looking into the eyes of one who was evidently an officer, though his uniform was unfamiliar. He was plain-shaven and very short, almost as short, indeed, as Little Tapin himself, but about him there was a something of dignity and command which could not fail of its effect. He wore a great black hat like a gendarme’s, but without trimming, and a blue coat with a white plastron, the tails lined with scarlet, and the sleeves ending in red and white cuffs. White breeches, and knee-boots carefully polished, completed the uniform, and from over his right shoulder a broad band of crimson silk was drawn tightly across his breast. A short sword hung straight at his hip, and on his left breast were three orders on red ribbons, — a great star, with an eagle in the centre, backed by a sunburst studded with brilliants; another eagle, this one of white enamel, pendant from a jeweled crown, and a smaller star of enameled white and green, similar to the large one.
Little Tapin had barely mastered these details when the other spoke again.
“Why art thou thinking to desert?” he said.
“Monsieur is an officer?” faltered the drummer, — “a general, perhaps. Pardon, but I do not know the uniform.”
“A corporal, simply — a soldier of France, like thyself. Be not afraid, my little one. All thou sayest shall be held in confidence. Tell me thy difficulties.”
His voice was very kind, the kindest Little Tapin had heard in three long months, and suddenly the barrier of his Breton reserve gave and broke. The nervous strain had been too great. He must have sympathy and advice — yes, even though it meant confiding in a stranger and the possible discovery and failure of his dearly cherished plans.
“A soldier of France!” he exclaimed, impulsively. “Ah, monsieur, there you have all my difficulty. What a thing it is to be a soldier of France! And not even that, but a drummer, a drummer who is called Little Tapin because he is the smallest and weakest in the corps. To be taken from home, from the country he loves, from Brittany, and made to serve among men who despise him, who laugh at him, who avoid him in the hours of leave, because he is not bon camarade. To wear a uniform that has been already worn. To sleep in a dormitory where there are bêtes funestes. To have no friends. To know that he is not to see Plougastel, and the sweetheart, and the Little Mother for three years. Never to fight, but, at best, to drum voyous out of a garden! That, monsieur, is what it is to be a soldier of France!”
There were tears in Little Tapin’s eyes now, but he was more angry than sad. The silence of months was broken, and the hoarded resentment and despair of his long martyrdom, once given rein, were not to be checked a second time. He threw back his narrow shoulders defiantly, and said a hideous thing:
“Conspuez l’armée française!”
There was an instant’s pause, and then the other leaned forward, and with one white-gloved hand touched Little Tapin on the eyes.
••••••••
Before them a great plain, sloping very gradually upward in all directions, like a vast, shallow amphitheatre, spread away in a long series of low terraces to where, in the dim distance, the peaks of a range of purple hills nicked and notched a sky of palest turquoise. From where they stood, upon a slight elevation, the details of even the farthest slopes seemed singularly clean-cut and distinct, — the groups of grey willows; the poplars, standing stiffly in twos and threes; the short silver reaches of a little river, lying in the hollows where the land occasionally dipped; at long intervals, a white-washed cottage, gleaming like a sail against this sea of green; even, on the most distant swell of all, a herd of ruddy cattle, moving slowly up toward the crest, — each and all of these, although in merest miniature, as clear and vivid in form and color as if they had been the careful creations of a Claude Lorrain.
Directly before the knoll upon which they were stationed, a wide road, dazzling white in the sunlight, swept in a superb full curve from left to right, and on its further side the ground was covered with close-cropped turf, and completely empty for a distance of two hundred metres. But beyond! Beyond, every hectare of the great semicircle was occupied by dense masses of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, regiment upon regiment, division upon division, corps upon corps, an innumerable multitude, motionless, as if carved out of many-colored marbles!
In some curious, unaccountable fashion, Little Tapin seemed to know all these by name. There, to the left, were the chasseurs à pied, their huge bearskins flecked with red and green pompons, and their white cross-belts slashed like capital X’s against the blue of their tunics; there, beside them, the foot artillery, a long row of metal collar plates, like dots of gold, and gold trappings against dark blue; to the right, the Garde Royale Hollandaise, in brilliant crimson and white; in the centre, the infantry of the Guard, with tall, straight pompons, red above white, and square black shakos, trimmed with scarlet cord.
Close at hand, surrounding Little Tapin and his companion, were the most brilliant figures of the scene, and these, too, he seemed to know by name. None was missing. Prince Murat, in a cream-white uniform blazing with gold embroidery, and with a scarlet ribbon across his breast; a group of marshals, Ney, Oudinot, Duroc, Macdonald, Augereau, and Soult, with their yellow sashes, and cocked hats laced with gold; a score of generals, Larouche, Durosnel, Marmont, Letort, Henrion, Chasteller, and the rest, with white instead of gold upon their hats, — clean-shaven, severe of brow and lip-line, they stood without movement, their gauntleted hands upon their sword-hilts, gazing straight before them.
Little Tapin drew a deep breath.
Suddenly from somewhere came a short, sharp bugle note, and instantly the air was full of the sound of hoofs, and the ring of scabbards and stirrup-irons, and the wide white road before them alive with flying cavalry. Squadron after squadron, they thundered by: mounted chasseurs, with pendants of orange-colored cloth fluttering from their shakos, and plaits of powdered hair bobbing at their cheeks; Polish light horse, with metal sunbursts gleaming on their square-topped helmets, and crimson and white pennons snapping in the wind at the points of their lances; Old Guard cavalry, with curving helmets like Roman legionaries; Mamelukes, with full red trousers, white and scarlet turbans, strange standards of horsehair surmounted by the imperial eagle, brazen stirrups singularly fashioned, and horse trappings of silver with flying crimson tassels; Horse Chasseurs of the Guard, in hussar tunics and yellow breeches, their sabretaches swinging as they rode: and Red Lancers, in gay uniforms of green and scarlet. Like a whirlwind they went past, — each squadron, in turn, wheeling to the left, and coming to a halt in the open space beyond the road, until the last lancer swept by.
A thick cloud of white dust, stirred into being by the flying horses, now hung between the army and the knoll, and through this one saw dimly the mounted band of the 20th Chasseurs, on gray stallions, occupying the centre of the line, and heard, what before had been drowned by the thunder of hoofs, the strains of “Partant pour la Syrie.”
Slowly, slowly, the dust cloud thinned and lifted, so slowly that it seemed as if it would never wholly clear. But, on a sudden, a sharp puff of wind sent it whirling off in arabesques to the left, and the whole plain lay revealed.
“Bon Dieu!” said Little Tapin.
The first rank of cavalry was stationed within a metre of the further border of the road, the line sweeping off to the left and right until details became indistinguishable. And beyond, reaching away in a solid mass, the vast host dwindled and dwindled, back to where the ascending slopes were broken by the distant willows and the reaches of the silver stream. With snowy white of breeches and plastrons, with lustre of scarlet velvet and gold lace, with sparkle of helmet and cuirass, and dull black of bearskin and smoothly groomed flanks, the army blazed and glowed in the golden sunlight like a mosaic of a hundred thousand jewels. Silent, expectant, the legions flashed crimson, emerald, and sapphire, rolling away in broad swells of light and color, motionless save for a long, slow heave, as of the ocean, lying, vividly iridescent, under the last rays of the setting sun. Then, without warning, as if the touch of a magician’s wand had roused the multitude to life, a myriad sabres swept twinkling from their scabbards, and, by tens of thousands, the guns of the infantry snapped with a sharp click to a present arms. The bugles sounded all along the line, the tricolors dipped until their golden fringes almost swept the ground, the troopers stood upright in their stirrups, their heads thrown back, their bronzed faces turned toward the knoll, their eyes blazing. And from the farthest slopes inward, like thunder that growls afar, and, coming nearer, swells into unbearable volume, a hoarse cry ran down the massed battalions and broke in a stupendous roar upon the shuddering air, —
“Vive l’empereur!”
••••••••
Little Tapin rubbed his eyes.
“I am ill,” he murmured. “I have been faint. I seemed to see” —
“Thou hast seen,” said the voice of his companion, very softly, very solemnly, — “thou hast seen simply what it is to be a soldier of France!”
His hand rested an instant on the drummer’s shoulder, with the ghost of a caress.
“My little one,” he added, tenderly, “forget not this. It matters nothing whether one is Emperor of the French or the smallest drummer of the corps, whom men call ‘Little Tapin.’ I, too, was called ‘little’ in the time — ‘The Little Corporal’ they called me, from Moscow to the Loire. But it is all the same. Chief of the army, drummer of the corps, on the field of battle, in the gardens of the Tuileries, routing the Prussians, or drumming out the voyous, — it is all the same, my little one, it is all the same. All that is necessary is to understand — to understand that it is all and always for la belle France. Empire or republic, in peace or war — what difference? It is still France, still the tricolor, still l’armée française.”
He lifted his hat, and looked steadily up at the sky, where the first stars were shouldering their way into view.
“Vive la France!” he added. And on his lips the phrase was like a prayer.
Through the arc de l’Etoile the fading sunset looked back, as upon something it was loath to leave. Then Little Tapin flung back his head. There was a strange, new light in his eyes, and his breath came quickly, between parted lips. Without a word he swung upon his heels, slipped his drum into place, and marched steadily away, beating the long roll. Once, when he had gone a hundred metres, he looked back. The figure of the Little Corporal was still standing beside the basin, but now it was very thin and faint, like the dust clouds on the Champs Elysées. But, as the little drummer turned, it raised one hand to its forehead in salute.
Little Tapin stood motionless for an instant, and then he smiled, and, through the deepening twilight —
“Vive l’armée!” he shouted, shrilly. “Vive la France!”