Cocon has been wakened by Pinegal.  The man of figures therefore thinks aloud, and says:  “The squad had seventeen men when it set off for the war.  It has seventeen also at present, with the stop-gaps.  Each man has already worn out four greatcoats, one of the original blue, and three cigar-smoke blue, two pairs of trousers and six pairs of boots.  One must count two rifles to each man, but one can’t count the overalls.  Our emergency rations have been renewed twenty-three times.  Among us seventeen, we’ve been mentioned fourteen times in Army Orders, of which two were to the Brigade, four to the Division, and one to the Army.  Once we stayed sixteen days in the trenches without relief.  We’ve been quartered and lodged in forty-seven different villages up to now.  Since the beginning of the campaign, twelve thousand men have passed through the regiment, which consists of two thousand.”

A strange lisping noise interrupts him.  It comes from Blaire, whose new ivories prevent him from talking as they also prevent him from eating.  But he puts them in every evening, and retains them all night with fierce determination, for he was promised that in the end he would grow accustomed to the object they have put into his head.

I raise myself on my elbow, as on a battlefield, and look once more on the beings whom the scenes and happenings of the times have rolled up all together.  I look at them all, plunged in the abyss of passive oblivion, some of them seeming still to be absorbed in their pitiful anxieties, their childish instincts, and their slave-like ignorance.

The intoxication of sleep masters me.  But I recall what they have done and what they will do; and with that consummate picture of a sorry human night before me, a shroud that fills our cavern with darkness, I dream of some great unknown light.

______

[note 1] There is a complete set for each squad—­stoves, canvas buckets, coffee-mill, pan, etc—­and each man carries some item on march.—­Tr.

[note 2] Cantine vivres, chest containing two days’ rations and cooking utensils for four or five officers.—­Tr.

15

The Egg

We were badly off, hungry and thirsty; and in these wretched quarters there was nothing!

Something had gone wrong with the revictualing department and our wants were becoming acute.  Where the sorry place surrounded them, with its empty doors, its bones of houses, and its bald-headed telegraph posts. a crowd of hungry men were grinding their teeth and confirming the absence of everything:—­“The juice has sloped and the wine’s up the spout, and the bully’s zero.  Cheese?  Nix.  Napoo jam, napoo butter on skewers.”

“We’ve nothing, and no error, nothing; and play hell as you like, it doesn’t help.”

“Talk about rotten quarters!  Three houses with nothing inside but draughts and damp.”

“No good having any of the filthy here, you might as well have only the skin of a bob in your purse, as long as there’s nothing to buy.”