Foch the Man | Page 5

raconteur thoroughly acquainted with the country through which they were journeying. A fine, "that-reminds-me" gentleman was Espaing, and every turn of the road brought to his mind some stirring tale or doughty legend.
"Sainte Marie!" Froissart cried. "How pleasant are your tales, and how much do they profit me while you relate them. They shall all be set down in the history I am writing."
So they were! And of all Froissart's incomparable recitals, none are more fascinating than those of the countryside Ferdinand Foch grew up in.

II
BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
The country round about Tarbes has long been famed for its horses of an Arabian breed especially suitable for cavalry.
Practically all the farmers of the region raised these fine, fleet animals. There was a great stud-farm on the outskirts of town, and the business of breeding mounts for France's soldiers was one of the first that little Ferdinand Foch heard a great deal about.
He learned to ride, as a matter of course, when he was very young. And all his life he has been an ardent and intrepid horseman.
A community devoted to the raising of fine saddle horses is all but certain to be a community devotedly fond of horse racing.
Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it was a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with pleasure.
In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I have found the following description of the crowds which flocked into Tarbes on the days of the horse markets and races:
"On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with streams of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrénées and exhibiting in their infinite variety of type and costume all the races of the southern provinces and the mountains.
"There one sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of vigorous proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about something or other, in the midst of small groups of listeners.
"There are men of the Basque province--small, muscular and proud, agile of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and childlike in deed.
"There are the men of the Béarnais, mostly from towns of size and circumstance--educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their Spanish neighbors.
"There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of primitiveness--vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal a little subnormal in expression.
"Then, in the midst of all these characteristic types, moving about in a pell-mell fashion, making a constantly changing mosaic of vivid hues, there are the inhabitants of the innumerable valleys around Tarbes itself, each of them with its own peculiarities of costume, manners, speech, which make them easily distinguishable one from another."
It was a remarkable crowd for a little boy to wander in.
If Ferdinand Foch had been destined to be a painter or a writer, the impressions made upon his childish mind by that medley of strange folk might have been passed on to us long ago on brilliant canvas or on glowing page.
[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch (center) as a Schoolboy.]
[Illustration: The School in Tarbes Where Foch Prepared for the Military Academy.]
But that was not the way it served him.
I want you who are interested to comprehend Ferdinand Foch, to think of those old horsefairs and race meets of his Gascony childhood, and the crowds of strange types they brought to Tarbes, when we come to the great days of his life that began in 1914--the days when his comprehension of many types of men, his ability to "get on with" them and harmonize them with one another, meant almost as much to the world as his military genius.
Tarbes had suffered so much in civil and religious wars, for many centuries, that not many of her ancient buildings were left. The old castle, with its associations with the Black Prince and other renowned warriors, was a ramshackle prison in Ferdinand Foch's youth. The old palace of the bishops was used as the prefecture, where Ferdinand's father had his office.
There were two old churches, much restored and of no great beauty, but very dear to the people of Tarbes nevertheless.
Ferdinand and his brothers and sister were very piously reared, and at an early age learned to love the church and to seek it for exaltation and consolation.
Later on in these chapters we shall see that phase of a little French boy's training in its due relation to a maréchal of France, directing the greatest army the world has ever seen.
The college of Tarbes, where Ferdinand began his school days,