The game of
billiards is one of of Daudet’s short story collection. At glance, this story
about the soldiers who take apart in the game with their unusual conditions.
The event happens as they have been fighting two days, and have passed the
night with their knapsacks on, beneath a flood of rain, the soldiers are
completely exhausted. And yet for three mortal hours they have been left
waiting, with grounded arms, in the puddles of the highroads and the mud of the
saturated fields. Rain, mud, no fire, nothing to eat, a low, black sky, and the
enemy in the air about. The guns, with their muzzles pointed towards the wood,
have the appearance of watching something.
They are
awaiting orders, and headquarters sends none. They are at yonder stately
Louis-Treize château, whose red bricks, scoured by the rain, glisten among the
trees half-way up the hill. Truly a princely dwelling, quite worthy to bear the
banner of a marshal of France. Behind a broad moat and a stone wall which
separate them from the road, smooth green lawns, lined with vases of flowers,
extend to the porch.
Although the
owners have gone away, one does not feel the abandonment, the desolation of
war. The oriflamme of the leader of the army has safeguarded even the tiniest
flowers in the lawns, and it is an impressive thing to find so near the
battle-field that opulent tranquillity that is born of perfect order, of the
accurate alignment of the shrubbery, of the silent depths of the avenues. The
rain, which fills the roads yonder with such disgusting mud, and digs such deep
ruts, here is nothing more than an elegant, aristocratic shower, reviving the
red of the bricks and the green of the lawns, polishing the leaves of the
orange-trees and the white feathers of the swans. In the adjoining room one may
hear loud voices, laughter, the clicking of balls and the clinking of glasses.
The marshal is
playing his game of billiards, and that is why the army is waiting for orders.
Can it be that the Prussians are attacking.
"Very well, let them attack!" says
the marshal while chalking his cue.
Turenne asleep upon a gun-carriage was nothing
compared to this marshal, who plays billiards so tranquilly at the moment of
going into action.
With the roar
of the cannon is mingled the tearing sound of the mitrailleuses, the rattle of
musketry. A red steam, black at the edges, rises around the lawns. The marshal
cannot be seen. An aide-de-camp covered with mud forces his way past the
sentries and ascends the steps at one bound.
" Marshal,
marshal ! " You should see how he is greeted.
Whole
battalions are wiped out, while others stand useless, with their arms in
readiness, utterly unable to understand their inaction. Even after they have
fallen, the grape tears them still, and from the open wounds the generous blood
of France flows noiselessly.
They hardly
have time to mark the points. Already shells are falling in the park. The army
is in full retreat. The marshal has won his game.
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