We listen open-mouthed.  “A treasure—­well! well!  The old bald-head!”

The sudden revelation plunges us in an abyss of reflection.  “And to think how damned sick we were of the old cackler when he made such a song about his treasure and dinned it into our ears!”

“We were right enough down there, you remember, when we were saying ‘One never knows.’  Didn’t guess how near we were to being right, either.”

“All the same, there are some things you can be sure of,” says Farfadet, who as soon as Gauchin was mentioned had remained dreaming and distant, as though a lovely face was smiling on him.  “But as for this,” he added, “I’d never have believed it either!  Shan’t I find him stuck up, the old ruin, when I go back there after the war!”

* * * * * *

“They want a willing man to help the sappers with a job,” says the big adjutant.

“Not likely!” growl the men, without moving.

“It’ll be of use in relieving the boys,” the adjutant goes on.

With that the grumbling ceases, and several heads are raised.  “Here!” says Lamuse.

“Get into your harness, big ’un, and come with me.”  Lamuse buckles on his knapsack, rolls up his blanket, and fetters his pouches.  Since his seizure of unlucky affection was allayed, he has become more melancholy than before, and although a sort of fatality makes him continually stouter, he has become engrossed and isolated, and rarely speaks.

In the evening something comes along the trench, rising and falling according to the lumps and holes in the ground; a shape that seems in the shadows to be swimming, that outspreads its arms sometimes, as though appealing for help.  It is Lamuse.

He is among us again, covered with mold and mud.  He trembles and streams with sweat, as one who is afraid.  His lips stir, and he gasps, before they can shape a word.

“Well, what is there?” we ask him vainly.

He collapses in a corner among us and prostrates himself.  We offer him wine, and he refuses it with a sign.  Then he turns towards me and beckons me with a movement of his head.

When I am by him he whispers to me, very low, and as if in church, “I have seen Eudoxie again.”  He gasps for breath, his chest wheezes, and with his eyeballs fast fixed upon a nightmare, he says, “She was putrid.”

“It was the place we’d lost,” Lamuse went on, “and that the Colonials took again with the bayonet ten days ago.

“First we made a hole for the sap, and I was in at it. since I was scooping more than the others I found myself in front.  The others were widening and making solid behind.  But behold I find a jumble of beams.  I’d lit on an old trench, caved in, ’vidently; half caved in—­there was some space and room.  In the middle of those stumps of wood all mixed together that I was lifting away one by one from in front of me, there was something like a big sandbag in height. upright, and something on the top of it hanging down.