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It only takes breath." "Allons, messieurs!" As our car ran up a gentle hill we noticed two soldiers driving a load of manure. This seemed a pretty prosaic, even humiliating, business, in a poetic sense, for the brave poilus, veterans of Lorraine's great battle. But Father Joffre is a true Frenchman of his time.
Clerambault heard him one day talking with a friend named Lagneau on leave from the front; they said the poilus meant to knock everything to pieces when the war was over, maybe before. A man of the lower classes in France is often charming, quick to seize on your idea before you have had a chance to explain it thoroughly; but good Lord! how soon he forgets.
Burton made her audience laugh until the tears ran down their wrinkled faces with funny stories of the trenches, of their own poilus, and the British Tommies and the new American Sammees. Never had the great actress used her talent to a better purpose. At least it gained for her from these simple and almost heart broken peasants the eternal tribute of laughter and tears.
I think this story is only equalled in its broad tolerance by that of the Rabbi Bloch of Lyons, who was shot at the battle of the Aisne whilst holding a crucifix to the lips of a dying Christian soldier. The soldier priests of France have earned the love and respect of even the most irreligious of the Poilus.
"Just look over there," he went on, waving his hand towards a long line of seated poilus who were peacefully enjoying their pipes, while wistfully watching the smoke curl upward. "Just look at them, aren't they splendid? Why they've got faces like the 'Drinkers' in the Velasquez picture. See that little fellow rolling his cigarette?
Henri and Jules and their comrades were, indeed, on this day, and upon those which followed, to experience fighting beside which that which had taken place on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd February had been almost child's play a grim, furious struggle was about to open, in which hand-to-hand contests were to be almost general, and in which that sturdy handful of poilus were to be called upon to make yet again the most gallant efforts.
They will be saying, 'Where are our airmen? like those old poilus we met at the station when we first came out. It's bound to influence morale. Now let's see. The balloon, we will say, is at sixteen hundred metres. At that height it can be seen by men on the ground within a radius of " and so forth and so on.
Father Joffre, as the soldiers call him, is running the next largest boarding establishment in Europe after the Kaiser and the Tsar. And he has a happy family. It seemed to me that life ought to have been utterly dull for this characteristic group of poilus, living crowded together all winter in a remote village.
That, indeed, was one of the characteristics of the gallant Jules; he could fight like a tiger if need be, though always with a smile on his lips, and, when the time for fighting had gone, no more friendly individual could have been discovered. Yes, it was Jules, a prisoner, and with him another of the poilus who had formed one of Henri's party. "Wait a moment!
The little man sat down at the piano, meditated a minute, and began to play the rich chords of Rachmaninof's "Prelude." He got about half through, when Zip-bang! a small shell burst down the street. The dark fellow threw open the French window. The poilus were scurrying to shelter. The pianist continued with the "Prelude." Zip-bang! Zip-bang! Zshh Bang Bang. Bang-Bang! The piano stopped.
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