ldier husband
had passed 'within two fingers' of death. One cannot spend one's
earnings in a church, nor appease there the inextinguishable longings of
a sailor.

And lo!--on Christmas day Roche came back so drunk that his nurse Mignan
took him to his bedroom and turned the key of the door on him. But you
must not do this to a Breton fisherman full of drink and
claustrophobia. It was one of those errors even Frenchmen may make, to
the after sorrow of their victims. One of the female 'Powers,' standing
outside, heard a roar, the crash of a foot against the panel of a door,
and saw Roche, 'like a great cat' come slithering through the hole. He
flung his arm out, brushed the 'Power' back against the wall, cried out
fiercely: '_La boite--je ne veux pas la boite!_' and rushed for the
stairs. Here were other female 'Powers'; he dashed them aside and passed
down. But in the bureau at the foot was a young Corporal of the '_Legion
Etrangere_'--a Spaniard who had volunteered for France--great France; he
ran out, took Roche gently by the arm, and offered to drink with him.
And so they sat, those two, in the little bureau, drinking black coffee,
while the young Corporal talked like an angel and Roche like a wild
man--about his mother, about his dead brother who had been sitting on
his bed, as he said, about '_la boite_,' and the turning of that key.
And slowly he became himself--or so they thought--and all went in to
supper. Ten minutes later one of the 'Powers,' looking for the twentieth
time to make sure he was eating, saw an empty place: he had slipped out
like a shadow and was gone again. A big cavalryman and the Corporal
retrieved him that night from a _cafe_ near the station; they had to
use force at times to bring him in. Two days later he was transferred to
a town hospital, where discipline would not allow him to get drunk or
climb trees. For the 'Powers' had reasoned thus: To climb trees is bad;
to get drunk is bad; but to do both puts on us too much responsibility;
he must go! They had, in fact, been scared. And so he passed away to a
room under the roof of a hospital in the big town miles away--_la boite_
indeed!--where for liberty he must use a courtyard without trees, and
but little tobacco came to his cheek; and there he eats his heart out to
this day, perhaps. But some say he had no heart--only the love of drink,
and climbing. Yet, on that last evening, to one who was paying him for a
little net, he blurted out: 'Som