of different services that are only different in name--enough to
turn your brain. I tell you, the man that invented the names of all
those committees, he was wrong in his head.

"So could I help but be sick of it? Ah, mon vieux," said our comrade,
musing, "all those individuals fiddle-faddling and making believe down
there, all spruced up with their fine caps and officers' coats and
shameful boots, that gulp dainties and can put a dram of best brandy
down their gullets whenever they want, and wash themselves oftener
twice than once, and go to church, and never stop smoking, and pack
themselves up in feathers at night to read the newspaper--and then they
say afterwards, 'I've been in the war!'"

One point above all had got hold of Volpatte and emerged from his
confused and impassioned vision: "All those soldiers, they haven't to
run away with their table-tools and get a bite any old way--they've got
to be at their ease--they'd rather go and sit themselves down with some
tart in the district, at a special reserved table, and guzzle
vegetables, and the fine lady puts their crockery out all square for
them on the dining-table, and their pots of jam and every other blasted
thing to eat; in short, the advantages of riches and peace in that
doubly-damned hell they call the Rear!"

Volpatte's neighbor shook his head under the torrents that fell from
heaven and said, "So much the better for them."

"I'm not crazy--" Volpatte began again.

"P'raps, but you're not fair."

Volpatte felt himself insulted by the word. He started, and raised his
head furiously, and the rain, that was waiting for the chance, took him
plump in the face. "Not fair--me? Not fair--to those dung-hills?"

"Exactly, monsieur," the neighbor replied; "I tell you that you play
hell with them and yet you'd jolly well like to be in the rotters'
place."

"Very likely--but what does that prove, rump-face? To begin with, we,
we've been in danger, and it ought to be our turn for the other. But
they're always the same, I tell you; and then there's young men there,
strong as bulls and poised like wrestlers, and then--there are too many
of them! D'you hear? It's always too many, I say, because it is so."

"Too many? What do you know about it, vilain? These departments and
committees, do you know what they are?"

"I don't know what they are," Volpatte set off again, "but I know--"

"Don't you think they need a crowd to keep all the army's affairs
going?"

"