stiff caps which
brought to his mind the wimples of the nuns.... Some tall, stout girls
with blue and candid eyes laughed at the Spaniard without understanding
a single word. The old women with faces as dark and wrinkled as winter
apples touched glasses with Caragol in the low cafes near the port.
They all could do honor to a goblet in an opportune moment, and had
great faith in the saints. The cook did not require anything more....
Most excellent and charming people!

Certain lads decorated with the _Croix de Guerre_ used to relate their
experiences to him. They were survivors of the battalion of marines who
defended Dixmude. After the battle of the Marne they had been sent to
intercept the enemy on the side of Flanders. There were not more than
six thousand of them and, aided by a Belgian division, they had
sustained the onrush of an entire army. Their resistance had lasted for
weeks:--a combat of barricades in the street, of struggles the length
of the canal with the bloodiness of the ancient piratical forays. The
officers had shouted their orders with broken swords and bandaged
heads. The men had fought on without thinking of their wounds, covered
with blood, until they fell down dead.

Caragol, hitherto little interested in military affairs, became most
enthusiastic when relating this heroic struggle to Ferragut, simply
because his new friends had taken part in it.

"Many died, Captain.... Almost half of them. But the Germans couldn't
make any headway.... Then, on learning that the marines had been no
more than six thousand, the generals tore their hair. So great was
their wrath! They had supposed that they were confronted by dozens of
thousands.... It was just great to hear the lads relate what they did
there."

Among these "lads" wounded in the war, who had passed to the naval
reserve and were manning the _Mare Nostrum_, one was especially
distinguished by the old man's partiality. He could talk to him in
Spanish, because of his transatlantic voyages, and besides he had been
born in Vannes.

If the youth ever approached the cook's dominions he was invariably met
with a smile of invitation. "A refresco, Vicente?" The best seat was
for him. Caragol had forgotten his name as not worth while. Since he
came from Vannes, he could not have any other name but Vicente.

The first day that they chatted together, the marine, in love with his
country, described to the cook the beauties of Morbihan,--a great
interior