They try to kill a
man between jests; they laugh if a bullet wounds a comrade so that he
grimaces with pain--it is true; I saw it." It _was_ true, and had
reference to a sight scrape of a bullet across the tip of the nose of a
Towers private, and the ribald jests and laughter thereat. "They make
jokes, and say a man 'stopped one,' meaning a shell had been stopped in
its flight by exploding on him--this the interpreter has explained to
me. But cold--no, no, no! If you had seen this man--ah, sublime,
magnificent! With the whistling balls all round him he stands, so
brave, so noble, so fine, stands--so! '_Vive la France_!' he cried
aloud, with a tongue of trumpets; '_Vive la France! A bas les
Boches_!'"
The captain, as he declaimed "with a tongue of trumpets," leaped to his
feet and struck an attitude that was really quite a good imitation of
'Enery's own mock-tragedian one. But the officers listening breathed
awe and admiration; they did not, as the Towers did, laugh, because
here, unlike the Towers, they saw nothing to laugh at.
The captain dropped to his chair amid a murmur of applause. "Sublime!"
he said. "That posture, that cry! Indeed, it was worthy of a Frenchman.
But certainly we must recommend him for a Cross of France, eh, my
major?"
'Enery Irving got the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
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