Paris The Novel

Chapter nineteen




• 1917 •


Father Xavier had been buried in Rome a month ago, in May, and Roland was glad that they’d never meet again. For he had no wish to tell the priest he thought that God was dead.

He’d seen too much in the last three years.

As for the terrible mission he must undertake now, Roland de Cygne felt only disgust and shame. But he would do his duty. What else was he to do?

Swiftness and secrecy were paramount. People in Paris had no idea what had happened. The British were largely in the dark. As for the Germans in the opposite trenches, not a hint of it must ever reach them.

Not the faintest whisper on the wind.



When they paused to rest the horses, he took out a cigarette and lit it. Before putting the lighter back in his pocket, he gazed at it thoughtfully.

It was nearly three years since he’d been given that lighter. On the eve of the battle of the Marne.

How proud of themselves his regiment of cuirassiers had been. They’d made one concession to the modern world. Realizing that their shining metal breastplates might attract enemy fire, they had covered them with cloth. And there they were, entering Europe’s first mechanized war as if it were still the age of Napoléon.

He’d come upon one of his troopers fashioning the lighter out of the shell casing of a rifle bullet. Duras was the trooper’s name, a genial young fellow, good with his hands. The lighter fuel went in the shell casing, then the wick and a small flint striker were fitted on the top. A simple mechanism, but sturdy and reliable.

“Do you often make these, Duras?” he’d asked.

“Oui, mon colonel.”

He’d just been promoted to lieutenant-colonel the week before, he remembered, and he’d still been getting used to the appellation.

“Would you make one for me?”

“I will give you this one, mon colonel,” Duras had replied, “as soon as it is finished.” And a short time later he had brought it to him and shown him, neatly incised on the side of the casing, his initials: R de C.

“What shall I pay you?” he’d asked.

“A bottle of champagne when the war is over?” the young fellow suggested.

“Agreed.” Roland had laughed.

And he’d kept the lighter with him ever since, perhaps as a talisman of those last days, when war had still seemed to belong to a world he’d thought he knew.

A week later, on the orders of a well-meaning captain, Duras and a troop of more than 150 other cuirassiers had ridden over a low ridge and charged down upon a German force they hoped to clear from the area. There had been a sustained rattle of machine-gun fire, followed by silence. Half a dozen of the horses had returned, without their riders. The rest of the horses and all the men were dead, every one.

His cuirassiers had ceased to be a regiment in anything but name, soon after that. Sometimes they operated as mounted infantry, using their horses to cross terrain before they dismounted to fight with carbines on foot. They helped bring supplies. They escorted prisoners. No one even thought of a cavalry charge nowadays.

If only it had been the cavalry alone who were ill-prepared. What of all the infantrymen in their blue coats and bright red trousers—a uniform hardly changed in a hundred years? A uniform that guaranteed they were instantly visible to an enemy whose dull combat dress blended with the landscape. Madness. A quarter million brightly dressed soldiers killed or wounded in a single week upon the Marne. It had been months before the French army learned the simple art of camouflage.

Even their arms were inadequate. The Saint-Étienne, the Hotchkiss and the Chauchat light machine guns were hopelessly unreliable. It was the second year of the war before the troops had the more reliable Berthier, and there still weren’t enough of them.

Almost a million Frenchmen had been killed in the first three years of the war—five percent of the entire male population of France, from cradle to grave. And that was before the recent catastrophe.

Why did my country fail to learn from the conflicts of recent decades? he asked himself. The British had changed their uniforms, learned camouflage and flexible cavalry tactics from the Boer War in Africa. The Germans had studied these lessons too. And they had better arms.

If he’d been on the staff himself, Roland thought, wouldn’t he have been wiser? Or would he have succumbed to the terrible French habit of arrogance, just as everyone else had? France was the best, the most cultivated, the most intelligent nation in the world, so went the refrain. Therefore she had nothing to learn from the boorish Germans and the crude Anglo-Saxons, or anybody else.

But alas it was not so, and now she had a million dead to prove it. Brave troops, who’d fought like lions. The finest attacking troops in the world, in Roland’s opinion. The British soldiers said so too.

It is we who let them down, he thought. We who prepared our army so poorly. We who misjudged the German plan, so obvious in retrospect. We who arranged a European world that could not avoid this war. We the rulers, with the power to destroy all that we love, and the stupidity to do it.

And now, it seemed, the army command had finally gone too far.



General Nivelle’s offensive that spring had been bold, yet strangely unimaginative.

“We’ll smash through the German line on the River Aisne, and win the war,” Nivelle declared.

To Roland the plan seemed little different from the strategy that had cost countless lives already.

“We’re going to break through at the section known as Chemin des Dames,” his commanding general told him, “and roll up the German line. And here’s the clever thing,” his general continued. “We’re going to use a tactic that we tried out at Verdun, but on a huge scale.”

“What is that, mon général?”

“A creeping barrage. The artillery will fire just ahead of our troops as they advance. We lay down a stupendous shelling on the enemy trenches. What’s left of the men there will be entirely disoriented. And then our men will be able to race in behind the barrage and overwhelm the trenches before the enemy can even see them coming.”

“Won’t a good many of the shells fall short and hit our own troops?”

“Yes, but not too much, we hope. And it’s a lesser price to pay, if our men can sweep into the trenches almost unopposed.”

Roland had his doubts, but he knew it was pointless for him to say anything.

“What about tanks?” he asked. Personally, he thought of the new metal chariots as mechanical knights in armor. Partly for that reason, he believed they were important.

“Lots of them,” the general said. “We know what we’re doing.”



Nivelle’s offensive had succeeded in taking some points on the German lines, despite appalling weather, and the incompetent failure of the tank attack. But the German front did not collapse. And the losses of Frenchmen had been terrible.

“It wasn’t our fault. It was poor intelligence, my dear de Cygne,” his general had told him. “Who could have guessed the Germans were making their trenches like that?”

As the French troops advanced, taking huge casualties from their own artillery, and finally reached the German trenches, they did not find the Germans smashed and disoriented at all.

For the German trenches were not like the French ones in the least. To the French soldier, a trench was just a temporary, makeshift cover, from which to attack. To the Germans, a trench was a system.

Many of the German trenches had the advantage of high ground, but above all, their construction was entirely superior. The Germans dug far deeper. They fortified. They even had shelters underground. When the French laid down their huge bombardment, the Germans waited it out in the relative safety of their deep redoubts, and when the French troops finally raced toward the line, they found the Germans waiting for them, freshly supplied with first-rate new machine guns, with which they mowed the Frenchmen down.

The Nivelle offensive did not smash the German front. It hardly made a dent.

Its profound effect was not on the German army at all, but on the French. That was the tragedy.

And it was the reason for Roland de Cygne’s secret mission that day. A terrible mission he had never dreamed in his life that he would ever have to perform.

For unbeknownst to her allies and her enemies, right across the Western Front, the brave army of France had mutinied.



If Roland de Cygne was the guardian of a secret that June day, Marc Blanchard was guarding three. Two he had possessed since a week ago. They had caused him great agony of mind. This evening, he was going to talk to his Aunt Éloïse before making the decision about what to do.

The third he had learned that morning.

The meeting was so secret that it had not been held in any government office, but in a private apartment in an undistinguished street north of the boulevard des Batignolles. There were several government men, an important building contractor, an Italian lighting engineer named Jacopozzi, and several others. He wondered why they had invited him. Perhaps because, these days, they thought of him as both a designer and a businessman. Whatever the reason, he was flattered that they trusted him.

They gathered in the dining room of the apartment. It was a representative of the prime minister himself who opened the meeting.

“Messieurs, we are here to consider a most important project, and I must ask you never to divulge what we are going to discuss.

“Today we believe that Paris may face a new and terrible threat. It is a threat that London has already faced, and it is a threat that will only grow with time. I am speaking, naturally, of aerial bombing.” He paused for effect. “In the three years since this war began, many aspects of the military effort have altered; but the transformation of war in the air has been astounding. When we began, there were a few planes, mostly for reconnaissance, and if bombs were used, they were usually grenades or adapted shells dropped by hand by the pilots or copilots of those small open planes.

“Now, however, the German Gotha bombers are large, they carry a payload of over two thousand pounds, and they can fly at over twenty thousand feet where it is hard, if not impossible, for our fighters to attack them.

“I need not tell anyone here the supreme importance of Paris—its history, its art and its culture, for France and for the world. Paris must be protected. But we are not so far from the German lines. Fleets of Gotha bombers, making night raids, night after night, could do appalling damage—for let us remember that we are speaking not only of the explosions, but of the fires that may follow them. We can fire up into the sky. Our gallant fighters can go up to tackle the bombers, but all the evidence so far suggests that large bombing raids would be hard to stop. And so, if we cannot stop them, we must deceive them.”

“Deceive them?” Marc was puzzled. So was everyone else, except the Italian Jacopozzi, who was grinning. And now it was the turn of another of the officials to unroll a large map of Paris on the dining table, and to address them.

“Aviators at night cannot see much on the ground. If there is a little moonlight, however, they can usually catch the glimmer reflected on a river, and they often navigate by this means.” He took a pointer and indicated a point on the map. “Here you can see the River Seine. And I direct your attention to a place about three miles north of the city. As you see, the Seine here displays a series of curves which closely mimic those it makes as it passes through Paris. As you also see, much of the area here is open fields. It would be much better, therefore, if the German bombs fell up here rather than on the city. Our intention is to invite the Germans to do exactly that.”

“Invite them?” Marc was confused.

“Even so, Monsieur Blanchard, and in the simplest way possible. Paris will miraculously move.” He smiled while his audience waited. “Messieurs, we are going to institute a total blackout in Paris itself, and then we are going to build a second Paris, a fake Paris, just to the north.”

“You’re going to build a fake city? The size of Paris?”

“Big enough to be mistaken for Paris at twenty thousand feet, yes.” The man spread his hands. “I am speaking of a stage set, messieurs. A Potemkin village, but a thousand times larger than anything the Russians ever dreamed of.”

“Made of what?”

“Wood and painted canvas, mostly. And lights.” He indicated the Italian. “Thanks to Monsieur Jacopozzi, thousands of lights.”

“You’re going to copy big buildings?”

“Naturally. Buildings that the enemy will be looking for. Buildings that they can see. The Gare du Nord, for instance.”

“And the Eiffel Tower?”

“Yes. That should really fool them.”

“I can precisely copy the lights of the Eiffel Tower,” Jacopozzi said enthusiastically. “You’ll never be able to tell the difference. They will see an illuminated city.”

“You’re insane,” said Marc, shaking his head. “This would be the most daring theatrical deception in the history of war.”

“Thank you,” the prime minister’s man said. “We thought that you might like it.”

Marc laughed.

“It’s daring. It has style,” he agreed. And then, after a little reflection, he paid the project the highest compliment that a Frenchman can pay: “Ça, c’est vraiment français: that is truly French.”

A general discussion ensued after that. There were all kinds of practical questions to consider. But it was agreed that he and Jacopozzi would look at the overall design together, and come up with further specific recommendations.

When the meeting ended, he decided to walk the short distance to Place de Clichy, past some of his old haunts, and then down to the office from there. Since he’d become involved in the family business at the start of the war, he hardly ever went up that way.

Passing a bar he used to know, he went in and ordered a coffee. The waiter who brought it to his table was a young man. Marc noticed that he hobbled slightly as he walked. Marc gazed around the bar.

Wartime Paris was a curious place. For the last three months of 1914, when so many people had fled, and the government itself had briefly left for Bordeaux, he had wondered if it would turn into a ghost town. But once the two armies had settled into their trench warfare, the government and most of the people had returned, and Parisian life had resumed, albeit quietly. Food was often short, but Les Halles and the local street markets were still supplied. Bars and restaurants still opened, and nighttime entertainment too.

Paris had three main functions now. From the military headquarters in Les Invalides, it directed the war. It was also the place to which the vast number of casualties were taken. All the great hospitals of the city were full, aided by the American Hospital out at Neuilly, where American volunteers had taken over the entire local lycée as well, to provide beds for the French wounded.

And of course, it also provided rest and relaxation for the troops on leave from the front.

That meant large numbers of men, not only from every part of France, but from all over her colonies too. There were the colorful Zouave troops from Africa. Tirailleurs from Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, even Indochina. Men of every color, giving Paris a more international look than it usually wore.

In the far corner across from him, Marc watched two Zouaves talking quietly. It was a pity, he thought, that like everyone else, the dashing troops of France’s army of Africa had been obliged to abandon their bright uniforms and baggy trousers for duller khaki, but there was still something romantic about them as they smoked their long pipes.

He’d heard rumors of trouble in the army. The word was that a division or two had even refused to go back to the front line without some changes in their conditions, and that the army might be granting more leave. If so, there would be still more troops visiting Paris. The ladies of the night would have more work to do.

He turned his thoughts back to the fake Paris. Would it really work? Could the secret of it be kept from the Germans? He was just pondering this when the patron came over from the bar, and addressed him.

“Monsieur Blanchard? Do you remember me?”

Marc looked up at his face. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it at once. Then he did remember.

“You were the foreman when we were building the new rooms at Joséphine. You’d worked on the Eiffel Tower.”

“Oui, monsieur. I am Thomas Gascon. It’s my brother who owns this bar.”

“Dark-haired. Am I right? I used to come in here. Where is he now?”

“In the army.”

“At the front?”

“Not exactly. He’s in the quartermaster’s department. Supplies. He’s good at that.” Thomas did not add that he and his family had benefited from the army’s food supplies now and then, on Luc’s visits to them.

“You were a good foreman, I remember. Do you ever do any work of that kind now?”

“Not recently, monsieur. Not much on offer.” He grinned. “Unless someone’s wanting to build another Eiffel Tower.”

You have no idea, Marc thought, how close to the truth you are. But when work began, Thomas Gascon might be a good foreman to use. He’d remember him.

“You have a family, I think.”

“My wife and daughter are next door, in the restaurant. My son Robert, with the wooden leg, served you coffee.”

“Any other sons?”

“I had. Pierre was my younger son. We lost him at Verdun.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And your family, monsieur?”

“My parents are down at Fontainebleau, getting old. My sister is well. But my elder brother died three months ago.” He smiled sadly. “That is why I must go to the office now—like you, to keep the family business running.”

Thomas Gascon wouldn’t take any money for the coffee. Marc made a mental note to go to the restaurant sometime, and leave a tip.



Gérard. Dead. Even now he could scarcely believe it. He’d been in the office when it happened. A clerk, ashen-faced, had come into his office and led him down the passage to Gérard’s. His brother had been sitting at his desk—almost as he usually did, except that he was leaning back at a strange angle in his big chair. The stroke had obviously killed him quite suddenly. There had been no warning at all.

And Marc had been obliged to take over in his place.

Looking back, it seemed to him that from the first day Gérard had asked him to join him, his brother had had an inkling of what was coming. He’d taken care that, little as it interested him, Marc obtained a good idea how the wholesale business worked, who the suppliers were, how to treat them and the workings of the distribution process. Though Gérard controlled the finances, including those of the department store, Marc understood how all the accounts were put together and where all the information was kept. He was quite surprised to discover, after the first shock of Gérard’s death, that he knew exactly what to do.

For the last three months, he’d kept everything in good order. Not only that, he’d made his own investigations into every corner of the businesses, just to make sure that some aspect of them didn’t suddenly take him unawares.

That was how, last week, he had made the two awful discoveries that had been haunting him ever since.

Gérard had known he’d discover those, too. In fact, Marc realized, he’d wanted him to.

He wondered what Aunt Éloïse would say when he told her.



She had changed remarkably little down the years. She used an ebony stick when she walked, but didn’t always bother to do even that. Her face remained smooth. She was as elegant at seventy as she had been at forty.

He’d offered to take her out to dinner, but she preferred to have a delicious little supper served in her own apartment. They dined under a small Manet and a Pissarro. He waited until the dessert before he told her.

“I have two pieces of bad news. The first is that I made a discovery in the accounts. It went back to early 1915, but I happened to find it when I was going through the records of one of our suppliers.”

“We owe money?”

“Not exactly. Worse. Gérard had dealings with a wholesaler up on the north coast. Dunkirk to be exact. They were supplying shipments of food to the French army.”

“What of it?”

“A huge shipment—potatoes, flour, all kinds of essentials—went missing. Apparently the Germans took them. But Gérard was paid all the same.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Except that he sold them to the Germans.”

“Are you sure?”

“There can be no doubt. But the Germans didn’t get them. He told them that the French army had captured the shipment. So the Germans paid him to get some more.”

“Which he delivered?”

“No. He said that the French had captured them too.”

“So who got the supplies in the end?”

“The French. But they had to pay for them. He sold the same goods four times.”

“At least we got them in the end.”

“But it’s criminal.”

“By Gérard’s standards, one might say it was patriotic. The Germans paid twice and got nothing.”

“God knows what else he did that I don’t know about. The question is, what do I do? I’d like to do something for the French.”

“The first thing is that you must not say a word about shipments. Not a word. It will never be discovered now, and does nothing but bring his memory and our name into disrepute. Think of his widow and his children. You should burn the records straightaway. Give them to me and I’ll burn them. Then forget about it. By all means find any way you can to contribute to our war effort. You will be thanked, and that is good. After all, you had no part in the business, and I know that you would never have done such a thing.”

“I’m just shocked.”

“You said there were two items of bad news. What is the other?”

“Joséphine. The store. It’s losing money. In fact, it has been since the war began. Gérard always told me that we were breaking even. But he was lying. I was running it, but I left the financial side to him. I feel a fool.”

“I’m not surprised in the least. A war isn’t the best time to sell fashion goods. Money’s tight.”

“We still made sales. Dropped our prices, changed the merchandise, operated only part of the store. But it seems we lost money. Why didn’t he tell me?”

“It was the price he thought he needed to pay to keep you in the business. Thank God he did. We need you there now.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Yes you do. Sell it or close it.”

“But that’s terrible. Think of Father. It would break his heart.”

“He’s a businessman. He’ll understand. All he wants to do now is enjoy his old age in Fontainebleau.”

“But I can’t run a wholesale business.”

“You must. Gérard has two daughters and a son, who will be conscripted any minute. You must do it for them. It’s your duty.”

“But my talents …”

“Will have to wait. I love you, Marc, but you must continue to be unselfish. Your family has given you all the good fortune you have. You said you wanted to pay your country back for Gérard’s theft. Good. And you must pay the family back for your good fortune.”

“I don’t particularly like Gérard’s children.”

“I couldn’t care less. Marc, when I depart, I have always intended that you should be my heir. Who else would I leave all these paintings to? But if you won’t do what you should, then you are no better than your brother, and I shall leave everything to a museum.”

“I thought you were more spiritual.”

“I am very spiritual. Others are dying at the front. Be grateful that your duty is, by comparison, so easy.”

Marc sighed.

“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” he said.



Le Sourd had no doubt about his fate. He was going to be shot. He’d written two letters to his son. One which the censors might see. The second, of which he made three copies, was given to three men in the regiment that he trusted.

The letter explained what he believed in and why he had acted as he did, but it did not enjoin his son to follow in his footsteps. It told him to make up his own mind what course to follow when he became a man, and to think only of his mother and her welfare until then.

He’d never made any secret of the fact that he was a socialist. There had been no need. There were plenty of good trade union men in the army, and most of them had socialist leanings, at the least.

“We need to fight the German Empire,” he would tell his comrades, “but it was the capitalist class that got us into this mess, and when the workers sweep them away, the need for wars will end.”

Since he was older than the other men, they began to call him Papa. Even the sergeants called him that sometimes. His job in the printer’s and his reading had left him more literate than most. If a young fellow was struggling with a letter home, he’d often come to Le Sourd to help him straighten it out grammatically, or provide the words he was searching for. Sometimes, he would do more. When young Pierre Gascon was killed at Verdun, along with his lieutenant and captain, it was Le Sourd who wrote a letter to his parents about the young man’s valor and his other good qualities.

But he never lost sight of his ultimate goal, and he watched for opportunities. Indeed, the war itself, with its massive casualties, was an opportunity. If this senseless carnage and destruction were the result of the present world order, didn’t that show that it was time for a change? Wasn’t the capitalist world demonstrating that it was a heartless consumer of lives, whose inherent contradictions would lead it to destroy itself? He had brought quite a number of the men around to his point of view.

He suspected that he’d even got through to an officer once. “Well, Papa Le Sourd,” the captain had remarked to him in a friendly way, “you think the workers of the world could organize this war better?”

“The question, mon capitaine,” he’d replied, “is whether they could do worse.”

The officer had laughed, and said nothing more. But Le Sourd suspected that, in secret, the captain didn’t disagree.

By 1916 he’d been promoted to corporal. His captain had once asked him if he’d like to be a sergeant, but he’d said no. That would be yielding to the system too much.

Meanwhile, he’d been receiving literature regularly from Paris. Some were permitted newspapers, others were more private communications.

And then, in 1917, had come the electrifying news from Russia. The army had mutinied. It was a revolution.

The socialists were astonished. The revolution was supposed to begin in the industrialized countries, where there was an urban proletariat, not in backward Russia. Evidently the war had been the catalyst. And if in Russia, why not elsewhere? A stream of literature began to reach Le Sourd from Paris. All along the Western Front, other men like himself were being alerted. For the committed men of the Left, a new excitement was in the air.

And then, at the end of May, after the disaster of the Nivelle Offensive, the news had come. The authorities might be able to keep it hidden from the outside world, but they couldn’t stop the rumors spreading along the front. They spread like wildfire.

“There’s a mutiny. Whole regiments are leaving the front.” Ten, twenty, thirty thousand men had marched to the rear and refused to go back to their posts. The conditions were terrible. The direction of the war was completely incompetent. The slaughter was senseless. All along the line, troops that had been in the towns behind the line were refusing to obey orders. Just after the start of June, an entire regiment had taken charge of itself and marched back to occupy the little town Missy-aux-Bois which it was holding for itself.

An infantry brigade had looted a supply column and was returning to Paris. A motor convoy had been taken over as well.



They had been here at the front when the mutiny had come to their regiment. It had started with a small incident. The enemy trenches had a number of outworks at that point in the line, and a sniper had taken possession of one of them. During the last few days he had managed to wound one fellow and kill another. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to take him out, if possible. So one of the lieutenants had gone to the section of trench just beyond Le Sourd’s, and told a corporal and a few of his men that he’d lead them on a reconnoiter that night, to see what could be done about the sniper.

And whether he’d been planning to, or whether it just came to him at that moment, the corporal had said no.

“Don’t refuse an order,” the lieutenant had said to him quite kindly. But it hadn’t done any good.

“I refuse. I’ve had enough,” the corporal replied, and the private beside him had ceremoniously laid down his rifle and said, “Me too. No more orders. It’s finished.” There had been a murmur of assent from all the men around.

And that was it. A mutiny.

Le Sourd had wasted no time. Within minutes, he was distributing leaflets down the line. In his own section of the trench, he had the men singing “The Internationale.” One young man improvised a red flag and hoisted it over the trench.

“The mutiny is just a start,” he told the men. “It will be nothing unless it leads to something with real meaning. France led the world with its Revolution. That was the beginning. But now we have the chance to take the next great step forward. This war has shown the absurdity of the capitalist world. Now is the time to join your fellow workers in Russia and all over the world. We want revolution and nothing less.”

For a few days, he thought it might work. Other units across the front also raised the red flag. If the mutiny had been complete, if the troops had turned and converged upon Paris, then who knew what might have happened?

But the French troops still loved their country. And the government for once acted wisely. Nivelle lost his command. And in his place they put a very brave and clever man.

Pétain.

General Pétain acted swiftly. Word went out at once to all the troops. Their grievances would be heard. Their tours of duty at the front were to be shortened, and there was to be more leave, forthwith. Last but not least: “The Americans will be with us soon. There shall be no new offensive until we have the support of American arms and men.”

With this promise, the mutiny of the French army was calmed, and everyone sat down to talk.

But the mutiny could not be ignored. Discipline must be restored. The chief culprits must face a court-martial. And each regiment where there had been a mutiny was told: “Choose the ringleaders only, and they’ll have a fair trial.”

Commissions were sent out to give guidance to each regiment, and to escort the culprits to trial.

Le Sourd was quite clear that he would be chosen. He was guilty of more than inciting mutiny. He’d encouraged the troops to overthrow the government itself.

And if he’d had even the faintest doubt on the outcome of the business, it vanished immediately as soon as he saw the leader of the commission ride up to the line.

It was Roland de Cygne.



Roland didn’t catch sight of Le Sourd. His mind was on the business at hand. When he’d been given his mission, his general had been extremely clear with him.

“My dear de Cygne, this must seem a wretched mission I am giving you, more suitable to a hangman or a jailer.”

“That is true, mon général.”

“Yet in fact, it is a mission of the utmost delicacy and importance. So first I am going to tell you a little secret. Pétain has been to see Haig, the general commanding the British forces. He has informed Haig that there have been some small mutinies, quickly contained, and that they only touched two divisions of the French army. Do you know how many divisions have in fact been affected?”

“No, mon général.”

“More than fifty.”

“Fifty?” Roland was thunderstruck. “That’s half the entire army.”

“Exactly so. The whole business is top secret. All the papers are being classified and will be under embargo. With luck, nobody is going to have any access to the truth for fifty years. Meanwhile, we are going to have to tread very carefully, or there won’t be an army at all. If the Germans find out …”

“I understand.”

“We have to do two things. One is to reassert military discipline. Many senior officers believe we should have immediate, large and summary executions. Pétain does not think that is wise, nor does the prime minister. What do you think?”

“My opinion is altered by what you have just told me about the size of the mutiny. I think the numbers should be as small as possible.”

“Good. When we’ve got them all rounded up, we shall have trials and give the death sentence to very few. Then we shall shoot fewer than that. Probably fewer than a hundred.” He paused. “For the second thing we have to do, even more important, is to restore morale. Each time you reach a regiment or division—some are up at the front line, many are farther back—you are to ensure that when the officers and NCOs select the men to be sent for trial, that they send troublemakers, that is, people who may start up this business again, and if possible, men who are not too popular with their comrades. We want as few martyrs as possible, and we don’t want to damage morale. Use your judgment.” He gave Roland a firm look. “Now you see that I am paying you a compliment by entrusting this mission to you.”

Roland understood. But it didn’t mean he liked the mission any better.



They met in the officers’ tent. The colonel of the regiment was there, a short, bristling man, together with a captain and three lieutenants.

“We’ve got ten men for you,” said the colonel. “Though I could let you have at least fifty who deserve to be shot.”

“I’d rather have five,” said Roland. “This wasn’t a very large disturbance.” Then he explained what Pétain was trying to achieve. “The minimum that will preserve discipline while encouraging morale.”

“If we chose only the men who first initiated the mutiny, the ones who refused a direct order, then I think it would be five,” suggested the captain.

“And that devil Le Sourd,” said the colonel. “That makes six.”

Roland noticed that the captain and one of the lieutenants looked awkward.

“Describe this Le Sourd to me,” said Roland.

“He’s a big fellow,” said the captain. “He must have been over the age limit when he volunteered. The troops call him Papa.”

“He’s a communist agitator, a revolutionary,” the colonel said furiously. “He had a red flag up, told the men they’d march on Paris and take down the government. He deserves to be shot more than any of them.”

“Black hair, and eyes wide apart?” asked Roland.

“That’s the man. Do you know him, sir?”

“He may be a fellow I came across once. The politics sound like him.” Roland thought for a moment. “You say the men call him Papa. Does that mean they like him?”

“Yes,” said the captain. “He helps them with their letters, you know, that sort of thing. He’s a good soldier,” he added, with an uncertain glance at the colonel. “Just believes in world revolution, that’s all.”

The colonel gave a snort of disgust.

“I need to know one thing,” said Roland. Did he commit an overt act of mutiny? Did he refuse an order to fight?”

“Not really,” said the captain, with another apologetic look at the colonel. “His advocacy of revolution came after the mutiny began.”

“What the devil does that matter?” cried the colonel.

“He committed an act of revolution, but not of mutiny,” said Roland.

“Are you mad?” cried the colonel.

“There are men in the government at this moment,” Roland said quietly, “who probably believe in world revolution. And after the war, mon colonel, if you wish to take up arms against them, I will fight at your side. I am the Vicomte de Cygne, and I am a royalist. But the instructions I have, which come directly from Pétain, oblige me to counsel you that this Le Sourd is not a mutineer—at least, not the kind we want at present.” He looked at them all severely. “I shall leave you for a short while now, messieurs, and when I return, I shall expect to receive from you the names of the men we are to take for court-martial.”

He walked away from the tent. He wasn’t sorry to be alone. This was the first time that his mission had taken him to the front line. The officers’ tent was just behind a small stand of trees. He walked through them. A short way in front of him he saw some breastwork made of mud and wicker. There was no one there. He could see an observation post thrust somewhat farther along the line.

He looked over the breastwork. It was strange to think that the enemy lay only a few hundred yards away, presumably quite unaware of the crisis taking place across the no-man’s-land between them. He stared ahead gloomily.

War had always been bloody, he thought. Nothing new there. But this war was different. Was there really a place for a man like himself—or for any human being, come to that—in this terrible world of machine guns, barbed wire, shell hole and trench?

Men used to speak of the glory of war. Perhaps that had been a lie. They’d spoken of honor. Perhaps that was only vanity. They’d spoken of grief. Yet there was hardly even grief anymore. Grief had been numbed.

For war was industrial now, like a great iron-wheeled engine of destruction that compressed flesh and broken bone alike into the endless mud of the killing fields. And for what purpose? He could scarcely remember.

So if ordinary men said that he and his kind had brought them to this nightmare, to this meaningless wasteland, he would have to acknowledge that they were right. And that perhaps their mutiny, for which they were to be shot, was the only sane act of the last four years.

And when it was all done, what story would be told? He did not know. Would tales of glory be invented? Or would there be a great silence? Men who have been tortured do not wish to speak of it. They close the memory in a lead-lined box and leave it in the cellar of the mind. Perhaps it would be like that. Or perhaps there would be a revolution.

He heard the sound of a rifle bolt behind him. Then a voice.

“If you reach for your revolver, I shall fire.”

He turned slowly.

“Le Sourd. I heard you were here.”

“We are quite alone. Did you know that there is a German sniper out there? I thought I would shoot you before he did.”

“I should have thought of that. It has been a long time. Aren’t you running some risk yourself?”

“I could say I went forward to warn you about the sniper, but that he got you. Then I could shoot some rounds toward the German lines.”

“You might get away with it. You might not.”

“I shan’t bother. They’re going to shoot me anyway as a mutineer, so I have nothing to lose.”

“Perhaps they will not charge you with mutiny.”

“I think they will.”

Roland de Cygne gazed at Le Sourd. He could have told him that he wasn’t going to be charged, but that would have looked as if he were trying to curry favor, a weakness for which Le Sourd would have rightly despised him. Roland was too proud for that.

“Perhaps,” he said calmly, “when you have shot me—and I advise you to stick with the story of the sniper, it’s worth a try—you will do me a small favor. In my pocket, you will find a lighter that a trooper once made for me. It’s just a little thing. You can send it to my son, and tell him that I asked you to do so. I should like him to know that I was thinking of him. That is all.”

“You are asking me to do you a favor?”

“Why not? With my death you have avenged your father. Matters between us are settled. You have no reason to refuse a small kindness to my son.”

Le Sourd gazed at him.

“Even in death, the aristocratic pose. I am not impressed, Monsieur le Vicomte. You are merely playing a role. Here in the middle of this desert of the spirit, you act out a part that belongs to …”—he searched for words—“a great illusion. It’s absurd. Perhaps you imagine that, in the afterlife, God is going to tip His hat to you in courteous recognition, like the Roi Soleil.”

Roland de Cygne said nothing. Even if he had agreed with Le Sourd, he would not have told him.

Le Sourd aimed. Roland waited.

“Merde,” said Le Sourd. And instead of firing, he turned and walked away through the trees.