What He's Poised to Do

Here I should pause, while you think about this single point of similarity between Delvigne and yourself: both lost mothers young. For many years, this was not a point of pitiful pride with Delvigne; he had not always been a sot and a fool. Fifteen years earlier, he was a capable commander who dressed sharply, had nearly perfect recall when it came to the recent military history of the nation, and was so fleet of foot that he could outrun a horse over a distance of one kilometer. I am not employing hyperbole here. In March of 1835, Captain Henri-Gustave Delvigne outran a horse for one kilometer and had enough time left over to scramble up a tree and leap down from a branch onto the bare back of the horse he had just bested. Now that was a soldier! That was a man! He had a taste for the ladies, but the ladies had a taste for him in return. I had heard tales of Delvigne’s appetites; I remember remarking to another captain that if I had a daughter I would not object if she ended up arranged compromisingly on Delvigne’s divan. I do not feel that way any longer, but I am not as far from it as I imagined I might be when my feelings started to change. If you, my dear one, responded to this letter with a brief note, “Father: With Delvigne,” I would feel only a twinge of rage rather than the consuming spasm that would be more appropriate to the news. Delvigne was, as I have said, a man with substance.

All of this, and a designer of tools of war as well. Back in those days, Delvigne contrived of a rifle barrel with a separate gunpowder chamber located at the breech and separated from the rest of the barrel by a rigid metal lip. After powder was packed into that chamber, a round bullet was pushed down the barrel and hammered into place with a ramrod, an act which, while flattening the bullet to fit the rifling grooves, also distorted it so that it flew crooked when fired. To permit continued use of this type of barrel, Delvigne invented a new shape for the bullet—it was longer and cylindrical, and expanded more evenly when beaten with the ramrod. This was an improvement, but not enough of an improvement, and the army did not take it up. Instead, they adopted a rifle designed by Colonel Louis-Etienne de Thouvenin, who had in fact only slightly modified Delvigne’s design. It was as if a painter had added a mole to the face of a portrait and was credited with the entire canvas. Delvigne was not bitter. In those days he had no need to be. He was a man with everything around him. He went back to his perfectly tailored coats, to his wine, and to the women who awaited him when he returned home from the field of battle.

Now, we come to the irony: if Delvigne was slighted to a small degree in the popular account of the first phase of development, he was overly credited to a great degree in the second phase. I was the arms master in that northern African camp where I was stationed with Delvigne, and weekly I took several shipments of rifles and bullets, and it was not uncommon for the soldiers to complain about inaccurate flight. “I cannot listen to the carping,” Delvigne said to me. “When a man does for his army one tenth of what I have done, then I will listen to him, but only then. Meanwhile, bring me a wineglass and a nurse: you fill the one and I will fill the other.”

I took his words as a challenge. The thought of Delvigne listening! On one of those rare rainy days, I was trapped inside the tent alone. That was the moment inspiration chose to appear to me. It occurred to me that perhaps the best way to create a bullet that would keep its shape when hammered in—and not, afterward, lose its shape again when the powder blew out of the compartment near the breech and into the barrel—was to make it cylindrical, with a hollow base and a pointed tip. When the powder caught, the fire and expanding gases would enlarge the skirting of the bullet enough to align with the grooves of the inside of the barrel and seal the barrel beneath the bullet to ensure maximum accuracy. I went away from the tent through the rain to the company’s smith, and I asked him to fashion a few of these bullets. He complied, and I brought those bullets back to the tent and placed them on top of an envelope that contained a note for Delvigne. “Captain,” it began, “here is a type of bullet that I have invented. I have simultaneously built upon the foundation you laid and razed the structure erected by Thouvenin, who is a scoundrel and a traitor and, from what I hear, a silent player in the symphony of love, if you take my meaning: he endeavors with all his might to bring sound out of his instrument but cannot.” The note was folded in neat thirds like a proper letter. I was and have continued to be meticulous in that regard.