So he would have to seek an escape route via the mental illnesses. The booklet distinguished madness which was visible to the naked eye: torsion of limbs, loud delirium, erratic shouting, dribbling, incontinence (in such circumstances there was no doubt as to illness), from invisible mental illness, which was very difficult to detect. Such cases required particular attention; behind such a madman one would often find concealed a fraud. Thus, it was appropriate to observe the subject when he considered himself alone, away from prying eyes. For this, it was necessary to have him at one’s disposal for some considerable time in order to make a definitive assessment, to provoke him into conversation, to probe him with varied lines of questioning, to ask him numerous and hurried questions pertaining to different subject matter so as not to allow him the opportunity to prepare his responses. And if any uncertainty as to the diagnosis remained in the mind of the military doctor, this latter should not hesitate to employ vigorous and painful means, provided however that such means not be excessively cruel.

Auguste could not for a minute see himself launching into such theatrics, especially where it would involve his family, who would be summoned for interrogation as to his nervous crises. Just the thought of his brother Ferdinand in full flight before the recruitment board explaining what Ferdinand was already in the habit of calling his leftist vegetarian deliriums gave him chills down his spine.

That left homesickness. The booklet specified that this would only constitute grounds for discharge and not exemption, if, and only if, the soldier so desperately wished to return home that he was exhibiting profound organic deterioration. In other words, if there were nothing left in his poor organic reserves for the country to draw upon.

The regulation height of recruits had fallen fourteen centimetres since Louis XIV, owing to the numerous conflicts with England and Austria and especially those great consumers of young healthy males, the Napoleonic campaigns. Given the dearth of handsome, strapping lads, they’d become much less demanding: these days a young man had to measure five foot one inch, namely a minimum of one metre fifty-five centimetres, in order to be enlisted. Auguste stood at one metre seventy-seven. A magnificent dragoon.

One might wonder who, after this latest war, would be left in France to produce any babies with the women, apart from minuscule or mentally deranged men. And if these power-hungry butcheries were to carry on for some time yet, the much-vaunted beauty of the French race, of which nationalists of all persuasions were so proud, would be nothing but the stuff of dreams . . . It was with these thoughts in mind that Auguste had closed the booklet, pondering the future of France.

Chapter 4

4

HILDEGARDE.

My best friend. My soulmate, as fools like to say.