Paths of Glory Read Online Free Page A

Sounds as if that’s our gang, all right. What’s up anyway?”
    â€œHave a drink,” said Duval who had had enough of it himself to make him feel friendly to a stranger.
    It is doubtful if the corporal heard him, however, for he was already half-way out the door (which he didn’t stop to close) when Duval spoke. And, if the roar of his cut-out and the skid with which his motor cycle took the corner was any indication, it is still more doubtful if he would have accepted the offer, even if he had heard it.
    â€œWhew! What a tornado!” said Duval. “What’s eating him, anyway?”
    â€œHe’s a dispatch rider,” said Langlois. “They always act important. Sometimes they are.”
    â€œWhat’s all the rush about? D’you think the Boche have broken through somewhere, or what?”
    â€œMy God, no. It’s probably an invitation to our Old Man to dine at the Divisional Mess. Or maybe it’s a flock of medals for the lottery . . .”
    â€œSo that’s how you got yours, eh, in a lottery?” said Duval, expecting a prompt denial and slightly shocked when it didn’t come.
    â€œPractically, yes. Listen, young fellow, don’t get the medal bee in your bonnet. It makes you do foolish things, and if you’re patient you’ll probably get the medal anyway without doing the foolish things for it. Don’t look so indignant. What else can it be but a lottery? All those men deserve medals, if you’re going to give medals at all, for what they stood at Souchez. But only some of them will get them. So it’s a lottery, isn’t it?”
    â€œWell, you’ve been pretty lucky, drawing down a croix de guerre with two palms, not to mention your médaille militaire also. You shouldn’t complain about it.”
    â€œI’m not. I simply say it’s a lottery. But it’s different from the usual lotteries in this way—your chances of winning prizes increase each time you win a prize. Anyway, that’s the way it seems to work. Or perhaps it’s more like making money. After the first million, the rest comes easier. . . . Say, it’s getting late. Let’s shove off.”
    Duval paid for the drinks, and they went out into a landscape upon which the declining sun was laying long shadows side by side with strips that had a golden glow. The air was soft, and the light, too, was becoming imperceptibly softer. The evening had the ephemeral quality of a caress, and Duval expanded himself to it, opened his city eyes, his city lungs, his city flesh to its grateful touch. “What a country to fight for!” he thought, his sensibilities made keen by just the right amount of wine. One more drink, he realized, and he might have spoilt it all, made himself ridiculous, by shouting “Vive la France!” But that was the way he really felt, he admitted privately.
    Langlois purposely took a couple of steps out of his way to satisfy the whim of planting his boot on the scar which the whizzing motor-cycle wheel had left in the mud. “What the devil did that fellow have in his dispatch case?” he wondered. “I’ve never known a corporal to pass up a drink before, especially if it’s free. Oh, well! We’ll soon find out. Or, better still, we’ll never find out.”
    Rounding the corner, the two men set off along the dirt road. They passed through a hamlet and over a stream, then up a wooded hill, falling one behind the other and picking their way through mud which lay rutted underfoot. The wood ended abruptly and neatly on the brow of the hill and they came out onto a low plateau of fields. The road led them, now walking side by side again, on an S-shaped route across the plateau. That, Langlois thought, was a pleasantly informal habit for roads to have. The slight elevation on which he found himself had the effect of bringing back the evening, which had already made one departure while he was