FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91  
92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   >>   >|  
he armies of France. On my way south I stopped for a night in Chalons-sur-Marne to dine with him. He was living in a comfortable but modest house, evidently the residence of a prosperous tradesman. When I arrived I found the small and rather barely furnished salon filled with officers of the staff, in uniforms of the beautiful horizon blue which is the universal dress of the French army. They were clustered about the marble-topped centre-table, on which, I imagine, the family Bible used to rest, but which now held the steel base of a 380-centimetre shell, which had fallen in a near-by village that afternoon. This monster projectile, as large as the largest of those fired by our coast-defense guns, must have weighed considerably more than a thousand pounds and doubtless cost the Germans at least a thousand dollars, yet all the damage it had done was to destroy a tumble-down and uninhabited cottage, which proves that, save against permanent fortifications, there is a point where the usefulness of these abnormally large guns ceases. While we were discussing this specimen of Bertha Krupp's handicraft, the door opened and General Gouraud entered the room. Seldom have I seen a more striking figure: a tall, slender, graceful man, with a long, brown, spade-shaped beard which did not entirely conceal a mouth both sensitive and firm. But it was the eyes which attracted and held one's attention: great, lustrous eyes, as large and tender as a woman's, but which could on occasion, I fancy, become cold as steel, or angry as lightning. One sleeve of his tunic hung empty, and he leaned heavily on a cane, for during the landing at Gallipoli he was terribly wounded by a Turkish shell. Covering his breast were glittering stars and crosses, which showed how brilliant had been his services in this and other wars. He is a remarkable man, this soldier with the beard of a _poilu_ and the eyes of a poet, and, unless I am greatly mistaken, he is destined to go a long, long way. It was the sort of dinner that one marks with a white milestone on the road of memory. The soldier-servants wore white-cotton gloves and there were flowers on the table and menus with quaint little military sketches in the corners. General Gouraud talked in his deep, melodious voice of other wars in which he had fought, in Annam and Morocco and Madagascar, and the white-mustached old general of artillery at my left illustrated, with the aid of the knives and forks, a new
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91  
92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

thousand

 

soldier

 

General

 
Gouraud
 
leaned
 

sleeve

 
Gallipoli
 

heavily

 

landing

 

lustrous


conceal
 

sensitive

 

shaped

 

slender

 

graceful

 
occasion
 

attention

 

attracted

 

terribly

 
tender

lightning

 
services
 

sketches

 

military

 

corners

 

talked

 

melodious

 
quaint
 

cotton

 

gloves


flowers

 

fought

 

illustrated

 

knives

 

artillery

 

general

 

Morocco

 

Madagascar

 

mustached

 

servants


brilliant

 

figure

 

remarkable

 

showed

 

crosses

 

Covering

 
Turkish
 

breast

 

glittering

 

dinner