. While we taste the joy of eating
at a table, a glimmer of light trickles through a vent-hole, and wraps
in dusty dawn a piece of the atmosphere and a patch of the table, while
its reflex lights up a plate, a cap's peak, an eye. Secretly I take
stock of this gloomy little celebration that overflows with gayety.
Biquet is telling about his suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman
who would agree to do him the good turn of washing some linen, but "it
was too damned dear." Tulacque describes the queue outside the
grocer's. One might not go in; customers were herded outside, like
sheep. "And although you were outside, if you weren't satisfied, and
groused too much, they chased you off."

Any news yet? It is said that severe penalties have been imposed on
those who plunder the population, and there is already a list of
convictions. Volpatte has been sent down. Men of Class '93 are going to
be sent to the rear, and Pepere is one of them.

When Barque brings in the harvest of the fry-pan, he announces that our
hostess has soldiers at her table--ambulance men of the machine-guns.
"They thought they were the best off, but it's us that's that," says
Fouillade with decision, lolling grandly in the darkness of the narrow
and tainted hole where we are just as confusedly heaped together as in
a dug-out. But who would think of making the comparison?

"Vous savez pas," says Pepin, "the chaps of the 9th, they're in clover!
An old woman has taken them in for nothing, because of her old man
that's been dead fifty years and was a rifleman once on a time. Seems
she's even given them a rabbit for nix, and they're just worrying it
jugged."

"There's good sorts everywhere. But the boys of the 9th had famous luck
to fall into the only shop of good sorts in the whole village."

Palmyra comes with the coffee, which she supplies. She thaws a little,
listens to us, and even asks questions in a supercilious way: "Why do
you call the adjutant 'le juteux'?"

Barque replies sententiously, "'Twas ever thus."

When she has disappeared, we criticize our coffee. "Talk about clear!
You can see the sugar ambling round the bottom of the glass."--"She
charges six sous for it."--"It's filtered water."

The door half opens, and admits a streak of light. The face of a little
boy is defined in it. We entice him in like a kitten and give him a bit
of chocolate.

Then, "My name's Charlie," chirps the child. "Our house, that's close
by. We've got soldi