Aug 192011
 

Pinet and Herbert jostled with me should-to-shoulder in the large sunlit lecture hall. I looked to left and right at them, and saw my own state of exaggerated excitation reflected in their eager young faces. Revolution had come to the streets of Paris, and we three had lived to see it! We were cadets of the Academy Militaire. What role would we play in this all-too-just uprising of ‘the people’? Could we three help to ressurect the Republic?

Just then, Old Aupick showed up at the front of the room, his back straight as a stick-pin. His chest was awash with medals glittering like foam cresting before a hurrying war-prow at dawn. His face drew itself together the way a spider draws its net tight when racing out from its hole to hog-tie a hapless fly. He seemed in complete command of the situation, despite his age, and despite our reckless excitement. Old Aupick blew out an attention-getting “harrumph,” ruffling his great grey mustache.

Most of the cadets in the hall were shouting: “We must go out! Out into the streets! Vivre la Republique!” At the sight of the old general marching into the hall, all of this shouting died down to a monotone of murmurs.

“Boys,” he began, “let not the valor and excitement of the day unseat your reason. Let not the chance to play at being petty deities under the storm-sky of rebellion over-awe the quieter braveries of fidelity and honor. ‘Honneur et Fidélité’ is the motto stamped on your cadet uniform buttons–do not mar their small shine by letting them reflect the general conflagration of the hour. It is to Mother France that our lives are pledged. We cannot choose our antecedents, but our destinies are our own. All the glory of France that has ever been can only continue in you–today–by your brave show of constancy. Change comes and goes: watch the weathercock when your little brothers are flying kites, and you will see his beak face every quarter! Hopes, when beaten loudly by the drums of troublemakers, as they are being beaten today, forged into harbingers and banners of insurrection and mere innovation, are but enticing chimeras crafted to draw you into another’s nets. I hope that you will remain the men of quiet constancy, of honor and fidelity, that I have trained you to become. Hope that preserves, that conserves your honor, that keeps your honor bright….” And here he paused and wiped his grey mustaches–I could not tell if a tear had tickled him. “Well, just this then: Today you have a chance to be worthy of your brass buttons.”

He stepped off the small stage with a brisk hop into the mass of agitated cadets, unconcerned for his safety, perhaps not caring to live in a France where youth could betray the quiet fidelity and honor he praised so highly for no more than a fancy handful of ‘hope and change.’

I, for one, was too ashamed to look Herbert and Pinet in the face, and made my way outside at once, my thumb thoughtfully running along the raised surface of my uniform’s buttons.

It was not until much later, having played many different roles in the drama of that agitated day, that I found myself, quite by accident, shoulder-to-shoulder with Herbert and Pinet again when a rowdy crowd of workers waving rolling pins and pitchforks spotted Old Aupick’s too-large epaulets and began shouting “Hoist him up along with his damned flag–by the neck!” The three of us had rushed forward from our various stations around the scene, as if by unconscious consensus, and surrounded the old man with our own bodies. Still looking as dignified as a deacon, we walked him to temporary safety over a sea of troubled faces.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.