chap with airs, spick as a daisy, with a gold-rimmed spy-glass—­eye-glasses with a tape on them.  He was young, but being a re-enlisted soldier, he had the right not to go to the front.  I said to him, ‘Sergeant!’ But he didn’t hear me, being busy slanging a secretary—­it’s unfortunate, mon garcon,’ he was saying; ’I’ve told you twenty times that you must send one notice of it to be carried out by the Squadron Commander, Provost of the C.A., and one by way of advice, without signature, but making mention of the signature, to the Provost of the Force Publique d’Amiens and of the centers of the district, of which you have the list—­in envelopes, of course, of the general commanding the district.  It’s very simple,’ he says.

“I’d drawn back three paces to wait till he’d done with jawing.  Five minutes after, I went up to the sergeant.  He said to me, ’My dear sir, I have not the time to bother with you; I have many other matters to attend to.’  As a matter of fact, he was all in a flummox in front of his typewriter, the chump, because he’d forgotten, he said, to press on the capital-letter lever, and so, instead of underlining the heading of his page, he’d damn well scored a line of 8’s in the middle of the top.  So he couldn’t hear anything, and he played hell with the Americans, seeing the machine came from there.

“After that, he growled against another woolly-leg, because on the memorandum of the distribution of maps they hadn’t put the names of the Ration Department, the Cattle Department, and the Administrative Convoy of the 328th D.I.

“Alongside, a fool was obstinately trying to pull more circulars off a jellygraph than it would print, doing his damnedest to produce a lot of ghosts that you could hardly read.  Others were talking:  ‘Where are the Parisian fasteners?’ asked a toff.  And they don’t call things by their proper names:  ’Tell me now, if you please, what are the elements quartered at X—?’ The elements!  What’s all that sort of babble?” asked Volpatte.

“At the end of the big table where these fellows were that I’ve mentioned and that I’d been to, and the sergeant floundering about behind a hillock of papers at the top of it and giving orders, a simpleton was doing nothing but tap on his blotting-pad with his hands.  His job, the mug, was the department of leave-papers, and as the big push had begun and all leave was stopped, he hadn’t anything to do—­’Capital!’ he says.

“And all that, that’s one table in one room in one department in one depot.  I’ve seen more, and then more, and more and more again.  I don’t know, but it’s enough to drive you off your nut, I tell you.”

“Have they got brisques?” [note 2]

“Not many there, but in the department of the second line every one had ’em.  You had museums of ’em there—­whole Zoological Gardens of stripes.”

“Prettiest thing I’ve seen in the way of stripes,” said Tulacque, “was a motorist, dressed in cloth that you’d have said was satin, with new stripes, and the leathers of an English officer, though a second-class soldier as he was.  With his finger on his cheek, he leaned with his elbows on that fine carriage adorned with windows that he was the valet de chambre of.  He’d have made you sick, the dainty beast.  He was just exactly the poilu that you see pictures of in the ladies’ papers—­the pretty little naughty papers.”