But who—­who?  Not Becuwe, he has only a marraine [note 1:] who sends him tobacco and note-paper every fortnight.  Not Barque, who would not toe the line; nor Blaire, the miser—­he wouldn’t understand.  Not Biquet, who seems to have something against him; nor Pepin who himself begs, and never pays, even when he is host.  Ah, if Volpatte were there!  There is Mesnil Andre, but he is actually in debt to Fouillade on account of several drinks round.  Corporal Bertrand?  Following on a remark of Fouillade’s, Bertrand told him to go to the devil, and now they look at each other sideways.  Farfadet?  Fouillade hardly speaks a word to him in the ordinary way.  No, he feels that he cannot ask this of Farfadet.  And then—­a thousand thunders!—­what is the use of seeking saviors in one s imagination?  Where are they, all these people, at this hour?

Slowly he goes back towards the barn.  Then mechanically he turns and goes forward again, with hesitating steps.  He will try, all the same.  Perhaps he can find convivial comrades.  He approaches the central part of the village just when night has buried the earth.

The lighted doors and windows of the taverns shine again in the mud of the main street.  There are taverns every twenty paces.  One dimly sees the heavy specters of soldiers, mostly in groups, descending the street.  When a motor-car comes along, they draw aside to let it pass, dazzled by the head-lights, and bespattered by the liquid mud that the wheels hurl over the whole width of the road.

The taverns are full.  Through the steamy windows one can see they are packed with compact clouds of helmeted men.  Fouillade goes into one or two, on chance.  Once over the threshold, the dram-shop’s tepid breath, the light, the smell and the hubbub, affect him with longing.  This gathering at tables is at least a fragment of the past in the present.

He looks from table to table, and disturbs the groups as he goes up to scrutinize all the merrymakers in the room.  Alas, he knows no one!  Elsewhere, it is the same; he has no luck.  In vain he has extended his neck and sent his desperate glances in search of a familiar head among the uniformed men who in clumps or couples drink and talk or in solitude write.  He has the air of a cadger, and no one pays him heed.

Finding no soul to come to his relief, he decides to invest at least what he has in his pocket.  He slips up to the counter.  “A pint of wine—­and good.”

“White?”

“Eh, oui.”

“You, mon garcon, you’re from the South,” says the landlady, handing him a little full bottle and a glass, and gathering his twelve sous.

He places himself at the corner of a table already overcrowded by four drinkers who are united in a game of cards.  He fills the glass to the brim and empties it, then fills it again.

“Hey, good health to you!  Don’t drink the tumbler!” yelps in his face a man who arrives in the dirty blue jumper of fatigues, and displays a heavy cross-bar of eyebrows across his pale face, a conical head, and half a pound’s weight of ears.  It is Harlingue, the armorer.