Berlin, March 1821
THE MAIL courier brought me to my garrison. One of my brothers-in-law, the Vicomte de Chateaubourg (he had married my sister Bénigne, the Comte de Québriac’s widow), had written me letters of recommendation to the officers of my regiment. The Chevalier de Guénan, a very companionable man, invited me to a mess hall where I met several officers distinguished by their talents: Messrs. Achard, des Mahis, and La Martinière. The Marquis de Mortemart was colonel of the regiment, and the Comte d’Andrezel was the major. I was placed under the private tutelage of the latter. I would meet them both again, by and by. The one became my colleague in the Chamber of Peers, and the other applied to me for certain services that I was happy to render him. There is a sad pleasure in reencountering people whom we have known during a different period of our lives, and in considering the changes that have taken place in their existence as well as ours. Like stones left behind us, they trace the paths we have followed through the desert of the past.
I joined the regiment in civilian garb, but within twenty-four hours I had assumed the clothes of a soldier. It seemed to me I had always worn them. My uniform was blue and white, like the old coat of my vows: I marched under the same colors as a young man as when a child. I was not subjected to any of the trials that the sublieutenants usually made newcomers undergo. I don’t know why no one dared pull those puerile military pranks on me, but I had not been in the regiment fifteen days before my fellow men treated me as an “old hand.” I picked up the operation and theory of firearms with ease, and I rose through the ranks of corporal and sergeant with the commendations of my instructors. My room became a meeting place for old captains and young lieutenants alike: the former told me stories of their campaigns, and the latter confided their love affairs.
One of these young lieutenants, La Martinière, used to come fetch me to go walk with him past the door of a beautiful Cambrésienne whom he worshipped: we happened by five or six times a day. La Martinière was a very ugly man with a face furrowed by smallpox; he spoke to me of his passion while drinking big glasses of red currant syrup, for which I sometimes paid.
Everything would have been wonderful if it weren’t for my extravagant love of clothes. The army then affected the stiffness of the Prussian uniform: small hat, short curls cropped close to the head, tight pigtail, coat buttoned to the collar. This very much displeased me. I would submit to these fetters in the morning, but in the evening, when I hoped never to be seen by my superior officers, I would crown myself with a larger hat, unbutton my coat, cross my lapels, and have the barber let down my hair and loosen my pigtail. In this informal state of dress, I went courting, on La Martinière’s behalf, under the window of his cruel Walloon.
Then one evening I found myself face to face with M. d’Andrezel. “What’s this, Monsieur?” the terrifying major said to me. “Consider yourself under arrest for the next three days.”
I was a bit humiliated, but I recognized the truth of the proverb that it is an ill wind that blows nobody good, for I was at last delivered from my comrade’s love affairs.
Beside Fénelon’s tomb, I reread Télémaque, but I was not in the proper mood for the philanthropic tale of the cow and the bishop.[5]
I am amused to recall the beginning of my career. Years later, passing through Cambrai with the King, after the Hundred Days, I looked for the house where I once lived and the café I used to frequent, but I could not find them. Everything had disappeared, both men and monuments.