Paris: The Novel

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 andwicker. 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