of idiot, then, greets
the day from the middle of the woods with a drum?... I try my best to
get a look, but I can't see anyone.... Nothing except the tufts of
lavender and the pine trees which go down right to the road.... Perhaps
there is some goblin, hidden in the thicket, mocking me.... It must be
Ariel or Puck. The rascal must have said to himself as he passed my
windmill:

--That Parisian is much too tranquil in there, let's have a dawn
serenade for him.

Whereupon, he took up his big drum and ... more drum-rolls.... Will you
shut that thing up, Puck, you will wake up the cicadas.

* * * * *

It wasn't Puck.

It was Gouget Francois, called Pistolet, drummer in the 31st Battalion,
and right now on his biannual leave. Pistolet is bored stiff here and
he has his memories, and he has his drum, and--when someone from the
village wants to _borrow_ the instrument--he goes out and bangs the
damned drum in the woods, and dreams of the Prince-Eugene barracks,
back in Paris.

Today, he is honouring a small, green hillock with his reveries. There
he is, propping up a pine tree, his drum in his arms, having a field
day.... Partridges, alarmed, take to the air from under his feet; but
he doesn't notice them. Wild flowers bathe him in their scent; but he
doesn't smell them.

He doesn't see the fine spiders' webs vibrating in the sun amongst the
branches, nor the pine needles, which jump about on his drum.
Completely given over to his reverie and his music, he looks lovingly
at the blur of his whizzing drumsticks, and his large, dull face lights
up with pleasure at every roll.

"How lovely the great barracks is, with its large flagged courtyard,
its orderly, all in line windows, its men in military caps, and its low
arcades full of clattering mess-tins!...

"Oh, the echoing steps, the whitewashed corridors, the smelly
dormitory, the belts to be polished, the slab of bread, the tins of
polish, the iron bedsteads with grey covers, the gleaming rifles in the
rack.

"Oh, the good days with the corps, the cards that stick to your
fingers, the hideous queen of spades with her feathered charms, the old
newspaper, pages missing, scattered on the beds....

"Oh, the long nights on guard at the Ministry's door, the old sentry
box which rains in, the frozen feet!... The carriages which splash you
going past!... Oh, the extra fatigues, the days without break, the
stinking wash tub, the wooden pillow, the reve