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28 chapters
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Gaston Riou was born on January 7, 1883. He is a native of the Cévennes, the region from which are derived three of the most distinguished among modern French psychologists, Melchior de Vogüé, Auguste Sabatier, and Paul Bourget. The Cévenole family from which he springs played an active part in the wars of religion. On the mother’s side he is related to Jacques de Vaucanson, the leading French mechanical engineer of the eighteenth century, and also to Majal Désubas, the last Huguenot martyr, exe
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REMINISCENCES OF A PREVIOUS JOURNEY
REMINISCENCES OF A PREVIOUS JOURNEY
September 2, 1914. Here I am a prisoner. What a journey! I am bitter at soul; it makes me sick to think of it. Across Rhenish Prussia, the Palatinate, the grand duchy of Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria, for three days and three nights, at every station, and even as we pass through the countryside, groups of peasants and gloomy crowds of citizens hurl execrations at us, stamp, and shake their fists, making signs that they would like to cut our throats and tear out our eyes. From the streets of cou
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FEVER AND LOW SPIRITS
FEVER AND LOW SPIRITS
September 16, 1914. The casemate is empty. My comrades have gone up to the nine o’clock roll-call. I am still “confined to my room by illness.” I am happy to be alone. It is cold. Wrapping my rug closely round me, I lie listening to the bitter wind. I am alone; I am free. It seems to me that the current of life has swept me away to the end of the world, depositing me amid dumb deserts of infinite vastness. The straw upon which I have been lying for a fortnight is reduced to powder. I roll myself
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DINNER
DINNER
September 20, 1914. It is exactly a month since we were taken prisoner. Here is the great event of this day of jubilee. It is a culinary event. None but the famished could appreciate it. I dressed hastily, for I had to be upon the upper slopes at seven o’clock. I had an appointment with a peasant woman, small, thin, with scanty hair, who comes here from time to time to cut the grass. Yesterday she brought me two pounds of sugar. The price was sixty pfennig. I gave her a mark, telling her to keep
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FONTAINEBLEAU
FONTAINEBLEAU
September 21, 1914. You remember that Andromache, made captive when Troy fell and allotted to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, rebaptized with Trojan names the streams and the hills of the Epirot capital, adorning the gloomy present with glorious memories. As at Troy, she had her Scamander. In this way, on clear nights, when she walked beside the river in the solitary fever of insomnia, it was sometimes possible for her to forget Neoptolemus and the hatred of the Greeks, and to dream of herself
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AN OLD CAMPAIGNER
AN OLD CAMPAIGNER
September 22, 1914. There are more than a thousand of them squatting on the grass. The sun rages down on this quadrilateral, as big as the Place des Victoires, enclosed by the steep slopes of the scarp. Every one is nodding. The German flag and the Bavarian flag hang inertly along their twin staves. This frippery has been hoisted to celebrate the taking of ⸺. There is not a breath of wind. The heat is stifling. Sentinels pace to and fro. What is going on behind the forbidden slopes? Above the pa
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I HAVE A TABLE
I HAVE A TABLE
September 23, 1914. The useful furniture of our casemate consists of the following articles: a ewer, a dish, and a lamp. I say “the useful furniture,” for we have also an imposing iron stove, some heavy bars of iron to barricade the doors and windows, and two pieces of sheet iron about half an inch thick. But there is no table. There was one at first, but they took it away from us to furnish the chapel, where it serves as altar. As for chairs, benches, stools, there is nothing of the sort. Conse
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WE KILL THEIR HOPES
WE KILL THEIR HOPES
September 26, 1914. Things are going badly with the Germans. Our guards may keep their mouths as tightly shut as they please, and may deprive us of newspapers, but despite our isolation we feel that things are going well for France. There was a splendid sunrise. When I went out to greet you and the dawn upon our acacia slope, the cold was dry and sharp. The air had an agreeable aroma of fresh earth. It was a pleasure to let the eyes dwell upon the play of morning light across the open country. T
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SUNDAY
SUNDAY
September 27, 1914. I have been at work all the morning. At ten o’clock, Guido came to fetch me for mass. Under his arm he carried the great missal, borrowed from the curé of Lenting, in which he likes me to follow the service. The sermon was delivered by one of his colleagues. It filled me with astonishment, so harsh, so pitiless was its tone, reeking of fire and brimstone, representing God as a cross between a satrap and a bogy. The preacher seemed a veritable priest of Saturn. His firmness of
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THE VICTORY OF THE MARNE
THE VICTORY OF THE MARNE
September 28, 1914. A batch of eighty-two convalescent wounded arrived at the fort on the stroke of five. We thought at first that they were ordinary prisoners sent here direct from the last battle. We were already running to meet them on the bridge, eager for trustworthy news, ready to throw a fire of questions at the unexpected messengers across the curtain of Bavarian bayonets. Then we noticed that several of them were limping, while others, though not limping, were leaning upon sticks after
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A BREAKFAST
A BREAKFAST
October 5, 1914. Plenty! I wake at twenty minutes to five, or, by French time, twenty minutes to four. There is a glimmer of moonlight in the casemate. The place looks like a fantastic sawmill with piles of planks lying about on the floor. The snores rise and fall rhythmically. However much divided our prisoners may be by day (as divided as men are in time of peace, and perhaps more so, for intimate association emphasizes differences and accentuates shocks), they, unknown to themselves, attain h
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THE FIRST LETTER
THE FIRST LETTER
October 8, 1914. Yesterday the rumour was current, derived, it was said, from the guard, that we were going to be permitted to write to our families. A similar report has stirred the fort two or three times before, but has hitherto always proved false. Consequently the pessimists and all the disciples of Heraclitus and the Porch—headed by Guido—had a fine time of it in the casemates making fun of the comrades who were jubilantly commenting on the news. On the glacis, at three o’clock, I met Serg
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STILL SHORT COMMONS
STILL SHORT COMMONS
October 15, 1914. The happiest moment in the day is in the early morning, when I leave the sleeping casemate. On the staircases, the lamps are flickering to extinction. The passages, always dark, are filled with the stench from the latrines and with what is sometimes termed a “poor smell.” I make a hasty toilet in the kitchen; take my half-pint of coffee from one of the steaming cauldrons; gulp it down without straining it, Turkish fashion; don my coat and my green cap; mount the stairs leading
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I HAVE A PALLIASSE
I HAVE A PALLIASSE
October 17, 1914. When I went out at seven o’clock there was a mist. It had the same smell, piquant and wholesome, as at Dully. The landscape was Japanese. I could have imagined myself looking at the right-hand kakemono in the drawing-room which gives on to the conservatory. The pretty village of Hepperg, brought near by a curious optical illusion, was stumped out in a long silhouette in the background, a delicate piece of filigree work seen through the soft, silky vapour. Here and there in the
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THE REVOLT OF THE HUNGRY
THE REVOLT OF THE HUNGRY
October 21, 1914. Yesterday was a great day! Perhaps the greatest of my imprisonment, if I except that of my first “teube.” [21] Oh, that first teube! After I had worn my clothes continuously for so many days and nights, the clandestine undressing at early dawn, beside the sink in Dutrex’s kitchen; the forbidden and unhoped-for sensation, to be, as if at home, naked beneath the steaming water; the lather of soap everywhere, on the hair, the neck, the chest, the arms, the legs, the feet; the douc
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A CHANCE CATERER
A CHANCE CATERER
November 6, 1914. The weather is sombre. The winter is coming on apace. On the grass, rusted by the frost, the leaves fallen from the willows have already rotted. This morning a gentle, damp wind was blowing, increasing at times to vent long sighs. The whole sky was bistre. Towards France, however, an islet of light was visible. On the Austrian side, the dawn had the ardent flushes of sunset. Skimming the ground, great flights of noisy crows were settling down on the freshly turned ploughs. Thin
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OUR GAOLER
OUR GAOLER
November 13, 1914. On Sunday, Baron von Stengel went to the Palatinate to buy horses for the artillery. He returned yesterday evening, after an absence of five days, looking a little thinner, his eyes weeping from a cold in the head. The weather in the transrhenish province had been wintry. The railway service was irregular, so he was compelled to make use of an open motor. During the first snows he had to drive about the country visiting horse-dealers. He is seventy years of age. He has just be
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THE SLOPES ARE FORBIDDEN
THE SLOPES ARE FORBIDDEN
November 20, 1914. Snow has been falling throughout the night. Risking a shot, for the new orders from headquarters are still more stringent, I walked for a good hour at dawn upon the northern ramparts. When the sun rose over the village of Hepperg there was sketched in the opposite quarter, towards France, in three strokes of the brush, the most striking of pastels: in the foreground, the old gold of the oaks, flaming, sanguine, and burnished: in the middle distance, the wide field of virgin sn
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A BLACK MOOD
A BLACK MOOD
November 27, 1914. A prey to depression, we are smoking in the “Salle du Jeu de Paume.” Laloux and Badoy, otherwise known as Badozus, are playing an interminable game of chess; d’Arnoult is reading Victor Hugo’s Histoire d’un crime ; Noverraz is dozing over Balzac’s Chouans ; Sergeant Scherrer, tall and thin, with cold eye and Mephistophelian head, is playing draughts with Massé, a non-commissioned officer of artillery. Seated upon the drawers of the drug cupboard, they are crowded round the sol
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A FRANCONIAN QUARTERMASTER
A FRANCONIAN QUARTERMASTER
December 4, 1914. The “Salle du Jeu de Paume” was born, if I may use the expression, from a conjunction of coups d’état. Day by day the quartermaster became more exasperated at the happiness of five Frenchmen. In accordance with the good German rules, they ought to have been sleeping upon the damp cement in the basement, which is really a dungeon. But since we have had palliasses, the house-surgeon, the apothecary, and their friends—Laloux, Badoy, Scherrer, Massé, and Noverraz—have been sleeping
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DAWN
DAWN
December 8, 1914. Half awake, I stretch out my hand to see whether Dutrex is there. His palliasse is deserted, his rug folded up. I raise myself on my elbow. All the others are still asleep, lying like long mute mummies. I draw on my shoes. At the main entrance, the sentries, hands in pockets, heads between their shoulders, are stamping their feet, their eyes white with cold. “ Guten Morgen! ”—“ Guten Morgen! ” I grope my way down the stair and along the passage. The lamps have gone out. There i
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HE GOES AWAY
HE GOES AWAY
December 13, 1914. He leaves this evening. Every one is sad. Who will replace him? If only it is not a man belonging to the school of the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten , [31] which has been summoning the government to take reprisals against the French prisoners. “ Geduld genug! ” exclaimed the official journalist; “We have been patient long enough!” He demanded the head of Colonel Grey, Sir Edward Grey’s brother, and also that of Delcassé’s son, both of whom had been wounded and taken prisoner.
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DISAPPOINTMENT
DISAPPOINTMENT
December 17, 1914. Our new gaoler has introduced a fresh method of taking the roll-call. We have all to line up in two ranks in the sticky mud of the ditches, and to wait there while we are counted. This ridiculous enumeration interferes with the digestion of our poor midday meal, and serves more than any other petty formality to remind us that we are prisoners. Just now, when the gloomy ceremony was finished, I went to see the Feldwebel . He is a wealthy horse-dealer from Ratisbon, cunning, sho
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OH, DEAR!
OH, DEAR!
February 26, 1915. The first warm, sunny day. The grey grass of last autumn is showing in patches here and there through the melting snow; it is slightly tinged with green. The sky is blue. A huge cloud, white and shining, rolls towards the north. Why do I feel so lightsome this morning? Is it possible that I am once more what I was before the war? If only the end were nearing, the end of the long miseries of winter in the lousy, stinking, and chattering casemate! If an end were nearing to the s
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THE RUSSIANS
THE RUSSIANS
April 20, 1915. The Russians whom we were dreading have arrived. For the last three months the Germans have been threatening us with them as with the plague, adding: “In the camps where the French and the Russians are together they always come to blows.” One morning the Oberstabsarzt inoculated us against cholera. Every one said: “They are coming!” The Feldwebel did in fact go through the casemates, allotting five to one, ten to another, and fifteen to some. In the afternoon, groups were watchin
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VASSILI
VASSILI
July 1, 1915. I am Vassili’s barin (seigneur). He polishes my shoes; every morning, in the court, he brings me water for my “teube”; he picks up balls for me in our extemporized game of tennis; if I am thirsty, he runs to the well; if the cloth of my worn trousers, too skimpy for me (the government has never been able to supply me with trousers suited to my figure), gives way during an unusually vigorous movement of Swedish gymnastics, he promptly threads a needle and repairs the damage; he watc
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THE COMMON PEOPLE OF GERMANY AND THE WAR
THE COMMON PEOPLE OF GERMANY AND THE WAR
July 7, 1915. It has lasted for eleven months. How much longer will it continue? Our sentries are even more impatient than we are ourselves. They grumble and faultfind. “It is too bad!” they exclaim. “Do you think it will be over in a month?” they ask us. “Pooh!” we answer; “in a year perhaps, or maybe two, when we have conquered the autocracy which tyrannizes over you!” They stare at us blankly, utterly disheartened. These poor fellows are suffering. They have many children, six, seven, or eigh
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CROSSING SWITZERLAND
CROSSING SWITZERLAND
July 31, 1915. Our convoy crossed Switzerland last night. I should have been sorry to be ill, ill with relief and happiness, for this would have made it impossible to describe our reception. It delighted and I must say it surprised me. I know Switzerland well. I love it like a second motherland. I am familiar with its history and its institutions. I have made prolonged stays by the shores of Lake Geneva, and dear friendships convinced me long ere this that our two nations are animated by the sam
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