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I would have obeyed; but my father had written in the same strain to General Suchet, the chief-of-staff, and this latter had replied that the commander-in-chief would be very put out to find that one of his divisional generals had taken it upon himself to disapprove of a promotion which he had made. My father then authorised me to accept, and I was gazetted sous-Lieutenant in December 1799.
Presently he saw a boat drawing away with the flag of truce in the hands of a sous-lieutenant. His mind was made up; he would escape to-night. His place was there beside his fellow-countrymen. He motioned away the men of the gun. He would load ma couzaine himself for the last time. As he sponged the gun he made his plans.
At all events he assumed as a matter of course that he, in the first rank as gentilhomme, would enter the army, if as a sous-lieutenant, still as gentilhomme.
To this end he repaired with a sous-lieutenant and six men to La Boulaye's house in the Rue Nationale, intending to station the soldiers there with orders not to allow the Deputy to go out, and to detain and question all who sought admittance to him. He nourished the hope that the ci-devant Vicomte might still be with La Boulaye.
To the left, in front of the airmen, two slight figures were visible, one in black, one in horizon blue: Captain Heurtaux still on his crutches, the other sous-lieutenant Fonck. The former was to be made an officer, the latter a chevalier in the Legion of Honor.
Guynemer a prisoner!... He had said one day with a laugh, "The Boches will never get me alive," but his laugh was terrible. No, Guynemer could not have been taken prisoner. Where was he, then? On the squadron log, sous-lieutenant Bozon-Verduraz wrote that evening as follows: Tuesday, September 11, 1917. Patrolled. Captain Guynemer started at 8.25 with sous-lieutenant Bozon-Verduraz.
There was a flagrant token of the military force under which civil freedom was held in the very dress of the Emperor and his insignificant son: the first in the uniform of a General of Division; the second, forsooth, in that of a sous-lieutenant.
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