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As for the ground floor, which was a few steps higher than the little garden, it was occupied by Commandant Chabran, a retired officer of the Colonial Artillery: he was still young, a man of great vigor, who had fought brilliantly in the Soudan and Madagascar: then suddenly, he had thrown the whole thing up, and buried himself there: he did not even want to hear the army mentioned, and spent his time in digging his flower-beds, and practising the flute without making any progress, and growling about politics, and scolding his daughter, whom he adored: she was a young woman of thirty, not very pretty, but quite charming, who devoted herself to him, and had not married so as not to leave him.
But the chief difficulty lay not in getting them to do something, but in getting them to act together. There they were quite unmanageable. The best of them were the most obstinate, as Christophe found in dealing with the tenants in his own house: M. Felix Weil, Elsberger, the engineer, and Commandant Chabran, lived on terms of polite and silent hostility.
Except for the charwoman who came from eight to ten to do the cleaning, and the tradesmen who came to fetch and bring orders, no one ever rang the bell. She knew nobody in the house now. Christophe had removed, and there were newcomers in the lilac garden. Celine Chabran had married Andre Elsberger.
I know only too many marriages which have suffered from such a want of union in thought." "Those husbands and wives did not love each other enough. You have to know what you want." "Wanting does not do everything in life. Even if I wanted to marry Mademoiselle Chabran, I couldn't." "I'd like to know why."
Andre began to laugh: and without answering Christophe, he fell to tender praise of Celine Chabran, and protested against her father's selfishness, who thought it quite natural that she should be sacrificed to him. "Why don't you marry her," asked Christophe, "if you love her and she loves you?" Andre said mournfully that Celine was clerical. Christophe asked what he meant by that.
And if, the very same day, Christophe met them together, they would pass him by with a frigid bow. On the other hand, people who had not spoken to each other for years now rushed together. One evening Olivier beckoned to Christophe to go near the window, and, without a word, he pointed to the Elsbergers talking to Commandant Chabran in the garden below.
He remarked upon it, and Andre was not reluctant to admit that he knew Mademoiselle Chabran, and that she had something to do with his visits to Christophe.
But you have done a good deal without knowing it." "What have I done?" said Christophe. "You are Christophe." "What good is that to other people?" "A great deal. Just go on being what you are, my dear Christophe. Don't you worry about us." But Christophe could not surrender. He went on arguing with Commandant Chabran, sometimes with great vehemence. It amused Celine.
Commandant Chabran was one of those wrong-headed old Frenchmen who are roused to fury by the newspapers, which make out that every immigrant into France is a secret enemy, and, in a human, hospitable spirit, force themselves to suspect and hate and revile them, and deny the brave destiny of the race, which is the conflux of all the races.
It must be added, if we would form a fair conception of the enterprise, that Napoleon well knew not one-third of these men had ever seen a shot fired in earnest. The difficulties encountered by Moncey, Thureau, and Chabran will be sufficiently understood from the narrative of Buonaparte's own march.
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