of each piece a separate street, so that a
single glance at a camp suffices to show the number of guns.

When Maurice reached his destination the artillerymen were already
stirring and about to drink their coffee, and a quarrel had arisen
between Adolphe, the forward driver, and Louis, the gunner, his mate.
For the entire three years that they had been "married," in accordance
with the custom which couples a driver with a gunner, they had lived
happily together, with the one exception of meal-times. Louis, an
intelligent man and the better informed of the two, did not grumble at
the airs of superiority that are affected by every mounted over every
unmounted man: he pitched the tent, made the soup, and did the chores,
while Adolphe groomed his horses with the pride of a reigning potentate.
When the former, a little black, lean man, afflicted with an enormous
appetite, rose in arms against the exactions of the latter, a big, burly
fellow with huge blonde mustaches, who insisted on being waited on like
a lord, then the fun began. The subject matter of the dispute on the
present morning was that Louis, who had made the coffee, accused Adolphe
of having drunk it all. It required some diplomacy to reconcile them.

Not a morning passed that Honore failed to go and look after his piece,
seeing to it that it was carefully dried and cleansed from the night
dew, as if it had been a favorite animal that he was fearful might take
cold, and there it was that Maurice found him, exercising his paternal
supervision in the crisp morning air.

"Ah, it's you! I knew that the 106th was somewhere in the vicinity; I
got a letter from Remilly yesterday and was intending to start out and
hunt you up. Let's go and have a glass of white wine."

For the sake of privacy he conducted his cousin to the little farmhouse
that the soldiers had looted the day before, where the old peasant,
undeterred by his losses and allured by the prospect of turning an
honest penny, had tapped a cask of wine and set up a kind of public bar.
He had extemporized a counter from a board rested on two empty barrels
before the door of his house, and over it he dealt out his stock in
trade at four sous a glass, assisted by the strapping young Alsatian
whom he had taken into his service three days before.

As Honore was touching glasses with Maurice his eyes lighted on this
man. He gazed at him a moment as if stupefied, then let slip a terrible
oath.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu