quid honestly with the same work and bother that he puts into forging a one-pound note.  But there, he’ll get his skin out of it all right, he will.  At the front he’d be lost sight of in the throng of it, but he’s not so stupid.  Be damned to them, he says, that take their grub on the ground, and be damned to them still more when they’re under it.  When we’ve all done with fighting, he’ll go back home and he’ll say to his friends and neighbors, ’Here I am safe and sound,’ and his pals’ll be glad, because be’s a good sort, with engaging manners, contemptible creature that he is, and—­and this is the most stupid thing of all—­but he takes you in and you swallow him whole, the son of a bug.

“And then, those sort of beings, don’t you believe there’s only one of them.  There are barrels of ’em in every depot, that hang on and writhe when their time comes to go, and they say, ‘I’m not going,’ and they don’t go, and they never succeed in driving them as far as the front.”

“Nothing new in all that,” said Barque, “we know it, we know it!”

“Then there are the offices,” Volpatte went on, engrossed in his story of travel; “whole houses and streets and districts.  I saw that my little corner in the rear was only a speck, and I had full view of them.  Non, I’d never have believed there’d be so many men on chairs while war was going on—­”

A hand protruded from the rank and made trial of space—­“No more sauce falling”—­“Then we’re going out, bet your life on it.”  So “March!” was the cry.

The storm held its peace.  We filed off in the long narrow swamp stagnating in the bottom of the trench where the moment before it had shaken under slabs of rain.  Volpatte’s grumbling began again amidst our sorry stroll and the eddies of floundering feet.  I listened to him as I watched the shoulders of a poverty-stricken overcoat swaying in front of me, drenched through and through.  This time Volpatte was on the track of the police—­

“The farther you go from the front the more you see of them.”

“Their battlefield is not the same as ours.”

Tulacque had an ancient grudge against them.  “Look,” he said, “how the bobbies spread themselves about to get good lodgings and good food, and then, after the drinking regulations, they dropped on the secret wine-sellers.  You saw them lying in wait, with a corner of an eye on the shop-doors, to see if there weren’t any poilus slipping quietly out, two-faced that they are, leering to left and to right and licking their mustaches.”

“There are good ones among ’em.  I knew one in my country, the Cote d’Or, where I—­”

“Shut up!” was Tulacque’s peremptory interruption; “they’re all alike.  There isn’t one that can put another right.”

“Yes, they’re lucky,” said Volpatte, “but do you think they’re contented?  Not a bit; they grouse.  At least,” he corrected himself, “there was one I met, and he was a grouser.  He was devilish bothered by the drill-manual.  ’It isn’t worth while to learn the drill instruction,’ he said, ’they’re always changing it.  F’r instance, take the department of military police; well, as soon as you’ve got the gist of it, it’s something else.  Ah, when will this war be over?’ he says.”