One of those with whom we are suddenly mixed up replies, “We’re the Fifth Battalion.”  The newcomers stop.  They are in marching order.  The one that spoke sits down for a breathing space on the curves of a sand-bag that protrudes from the line.  He wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve.

“What are you doing here?  Have they told you to come?”

“Not half they haven’t told us.  We’re coming to attack.  We’re going yonder, right up.”  With his head he indicates the north.  The curiosity with which we look at them fastens on to a detail.  “You’ve carried everything with you?”—­“We chose to keep it, that’s all.”

“Forward!” they are ordered.  They rise and proceed, incompletely awake, their eyes puffy, their wrinkles underlined.  There are young men among them with thin necks and vacuous eyes, and old men; and in the middle, ordinary ones.  They march with a commonplace and pacific step.  What they are going to do seems to us, who did it last night, beyond human strength.  But still they go away towards the north.

“The revally of the damned,” says Marthereau.

We make way for them with a sort of admiration and a sort of terror.  When they have passed, Marthereau wags his head and murmurs, “There are some getting ready, too, on the other side, with their gray uniforms.  Do you think those chaps are feeling it about the attack?  Then why have they come?  It’s not their doing, I know, but it’s theirs all the same, seeing they’re here.—­I know, I know, but it’s odd, all of it.”

The sight of a passer-by alters the course of his ideas:  “Tiens, there’s Truc, the big one, d’you know him?  Isn’t he immense and pointed, that chap!  As for me, I know I’m not quite hardly big enough; but him, he goes too far.  He always knows what’s going on, that two-yarder!  For savvying everything, there’s nobody going to give him the go-by!  I’ll go and chivvy him about a funk-hole.”

“If there’s a rabbit-hole anywhere?” replies the elongated passer-by, leaning on Marthereau like a poplar tree, “for sure, my old Caparthe, certainly.  Tiens, there”—­and unbending his elbow he makes an indicative gesture like a flag-signaler—­“’Villa von Hindenburg.’ and there, ‘Villa Glucks auf.’  If that doesn’t satisfy you, you gentlemen are hard to please.  P’raps there’s a few lodgers in the basement, but not noisy lodgers, and you can talk out aloud in front of them, you know!”

“Ah, nom de Dieu!” cried Marthereau a quarter of an hour after we had established ourselves in one of these square-cut graves, “there’s lodgers he didn’t tell us about, that frightful great lightning-rod, that infinity!” His eyelids were just closing, but they opened again and he scratched his arms and thighs:  “I want a snooze!  It appears it’s out of the question.  Can’t resist these things.”

We settled ourselves to yawning and sighing, and finally we lighted a stump of candle, wet enough to resist us although covered with our hands; and we watched each other yawn.