Henry Céard: He affected warlike sentiments

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

French writers on war and peace

Henry Céard: Distressed by uniform decorum of scenes of carnage

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Henry Céard
Une belle journée
Translated by Ernest Boyd

As an ex-corporal of militia he felt himself almost a real soldier because he had once tried to get promotion into the territorial army. Although it was established beyond a doubt that, during the battle of Buzenval, he had spent the whole day at Rueil, selling spirits and playing billiards, far from his battalion which had had a serious engagement with the enemy, he affected warlike sentiments, and made a point of cherishing an incredible hatred for the Prussians. He had even abandoned his favorite café, though the beer was excellent, because customers had come there who spoke German. He went so far as to call people whom he did not like Bismarck, thinking that he thus gave them evidence of his superior and supreme contempt.

On the evenings which his business and his amorous affairs left free, he used to absorb himself in heroic literature. He did not disdain the poets, those who proceeded by way of invective to soothe the soul with insults, and those of the more refined variety who melt the soul with sentimentalities. Just before he fell asleep his enthusiasm could be aroused by bad verse which celebrated the deeds of buglers mortally wounded but continuing to sound the charge. He adored the great ladies, disguised as Red Cross nurses, who were represented in alexandrines as selling their last jewels to free their native land. Another even more lyrical spirit wanted to marry a girl from Châteaudun, and when he had made her pregnant, declared his conviction that he was the father of heroes. Trudon approved of him. Then, without any transition, he returned to more serious works. A writer had gone to Germany; it was said that he spoke only of what he had seen there with his own eyes, and his observations were sup- posed to be exceedingly accurate. Trudon had borrowed this book, and its exaggeration of natural things, its constant determination to belittle, its excess of general conclusions drawn from particular facts, the very narrowness of its main outlines, responded to the most exalted sentiments of Trudon’s chauvinistic soul. He constantly reread it and thought of buying it. He thought it was well written and very readable. Above all, it was the work of an avenger!