M. Roux’s swarthy face, with its mat of frizzy hair, flashed into a bold smile that showed the brilliant whiteness of his teeth. “Do try, Monsieur Roux, to get my husband to use a little tact with people who may be useful to him. His conduct is making life a howling wilderness for us all.” “Surely not, Madame,” murmured M. Roux, turning the conversation. “The peasants,” said he, “drag out a wretched three years of service. They suffer horribly, but no one ever guesses it, for they are quite inarticulate when it comes to expressing subtleties. Loving the land as they do with all the intensity of animal passion, when they are separated from it their existence is full of deep, silent, monotonous melancholy, with nothing whatever to distract them from their sense of exile and imprisonment, save fear of their officers and weariness of their occupation. Everything around them is strange and incomprehensible. In my company, for instance, there are two Bretons who have not learnt the colonel’s name after six months’ training. Every morning we are drawn up before the sergeant to repeat this name with them, for every one in the regiment receives exactly the same instruction. Our colonel’s name is Dupont. It’s the same in all our exercises: quick, clever men are kept back for ever to wait for the dolts.” M. Bergeret inquired whether, like Sergeant Lebrec, the officers also cultivated the art of martial eloquence. “Not at all,” said M. Roux. “My captain—quite a young man he is, too—is the very pink of courtesy. He is an æsthete, a Rosicrucian, and he paints pictures of angels and pallid virgins, against a background of pink and green skies. I devise the legends for his pictures, and whilst Deval is on fatigue-duty in the barrack-square, I am on duty with the captain, who employs me to produce verses for him. He really is a charming fellow. His name is Marcel de Lagère; he exhibits at L’Œuvre under the pseudonym of Cyne.” “Is he a hero too?” asked M. Bergeret. “Say rather a Saint George,” answered M. Roux. “He has conceived a mystic ideal of the military profession and declares that it is the perfect way of life. We are marching, unawares, to an unknown goal. Piously, solemnly, chastely, we advance towards the altar of mystic, fated sacrifice. He is exquisite. I am teaching him to write _vers libre_ and prose poems and he is beginning to compose prose sketches of military life. He is happy, placid and gentle, and the only sorrow he has is the flag. He considers its red, white and blue an intolerably violent colour scheme and yearns for one of rose-pink or lilac. His dreams are of the banner of Heaven. ‘If even,’ he says sadly, ‘the three colours rose from a flower-stalk, like the three flames of the oriflamme, it would be bearable. But when they are perpendicular, they cut the floating folds painfully and ridiculously.’ He suffers, but he bears his suffering bravely and patiently. As I said before, he is a true Saint George.”