Short Stories, vol 2 | Page 4

MEETING THE BLIND MAN INDISCRETION A FAMILY AFFAIR
BESIDE SCHOPENHAUER'S CORPSE

THE COLONEL'S IDEAS

"Upon my word," said Colonel Laporte, "although I am old and gouty,
my legs as stiff as two pieces of wood, yet if a pretty woman were to
tell me to go through the eye of a needle, I believe I should take a jump
at it, like a clown through a hoop. I shall die like that; it is in the blood.
I am an old beau, one of the old school, and the sight of a woman, a
pretty woman, stirs me to the tips of my toes. There!
"We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain
knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished
whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out
of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her,
and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies
on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and
even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be
Frenchmen left.
"When I am in the presence of a woman, of a pretty woman, I feel
capable of anything. By Jove! when I feel her looks penetrating me, her
confounded looks which set your blood on fire, I should like to do I
don't know what; to fight a duel, to have a row, to smash the furniture,
in order to show that I am the strongest, the bravest, the most daring
and the most devoted of men.
"But I am not the only one, certainly not; the whole French army is like
me, I swear to you. From the common soldier to the general, we all
start out, from the van to the rear guard, when there is a woman in the
case, a pretty woman. Do you remember what Joan of Arc made us do
formerly? Come. I will make a bet that if a pretty woman had taken
command of the army on the eve of Sedan, when Marshal MacMahon
was wounded, we should have broken through the Prussian lines, by
Jove! and had a drink out of their guns.
"It was not a Trochu, but a Sainte-Genevieve, who was needed in Paris;
and I remember a little anecdote of the war which proves that we are
capable of everything in presence of a woman.
"I was a captain, a simple captain, at the time, and I was in command of
a detachment of scouts, who were retreating through a district which
swarmed with Prussians. We were surrounded, pursued, tired out and
half dead with fatigue and hunger, but we were bound to reach
Bar-sur-Tain before the morrow, otherwise we should be shot, cut
down, massacred. I do not know how we managed to escape so far.

However, we had ten leagues to go during the night, ten leagues
through the night, ten leagues through the snow, and with empty
stomachs, and I thought to myself:
"'It is all over; my poor devils of fellows will never be able to do it.'
"We had eaten nothing since the day before, and the whole day long we
remained hidden in a barn, huddled close together, so as not to feel the
cold so much, unable to speak or even move, and sleeping by fits and
starts, as one does when worn out with fatigue.
"It was dark by five o'clock, that wan darkness of the snow, and I shook
my men. Some of them would not get up; they were almost incapable
of moving or of standing upright; their joints were stiff from cold and
hunger.
"Before us there was a large expanse of flat, bare country; the snow
was still falling like a curtain, in large, white flakes, which concealed
everything under a thick, frozen coverlet, a coverlet of frozen wool One
might have thought that it was the end of the world.
"'Come, my lads, let us start.'
"They looked at the thick white flakes that were coming down, and
they seemed to think: 'We have had enough of this; we may just as well
die here!' Then I took out my revolver and said:
"'I will shoot the first man who flinches.' And so they set off, but very
slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them, and I sent
four of them three hundred yards ahead to scout, and the others
followed pell-mell, walking at random and without any order. I put the
strongest in the rear, with orders to quicken the pace of the sluggards
with the points of their bayonets in the back.
"The snow seemed as