ore again. I don't
know, but it's enough to drive you off your nut, I tell you."

"Have they got brisques?" [note 2]

"Not many there, but in the department of the second line every one had
'em. You had museums of 'em there--whole Zoological Gardens of stripes."

"Prettiest thing I've seen in the way of stripes," said Tulacque, "was
a motorist, dressed in cloth that you'd have said was satin, with new
stripes, and the leathers of an English officer, though a second-class
soldier as he was. With his finger on his cheek, he leaned with his
elbows on that fine carriage adorned with windows that he was the valet
de chambre of. He'd have made you sick, the dainty beast. He was just
exactly the poilu that you see pictures of in the ladies' papers--the
pretty little naughty papers."

Each has now his memories, his tirade on this much-excogitated subject
of the shirkers, and all begin to overflow and to talk at once. A
hubbub surrounds the foot of the mean wall where we are heaped like
bundles, with a gray, muddy, and trampled spectacle lying before us,
laid waste by rain.

"--orderly in waiting to the Road Department, then at the Bakery, then
cyclist to the Revictualing Department of the Eleventh Battery."

"--every morning he had a note to take to the Service de l'Intendance,
to the Gunnery School, to the Bridges Department, and in the evening to
the A.D. and the A.T.--that was all."

"--when I was coming back from leave,' said that orderly, 'the women
cheered us at all the level-crossing gates that the train passed.'
'They took you for soldiers,' I said."

"--'Ah,' I said, 'you're called up, then, are you?' 'Certainly,' he
says to me, 'considering that I've been a round of meetings in America
with a Ministerial deputation. P'raps it's not exactly being called up,
that? Anyway, mon ami,' he says, 'I don't pay any rent, so I must be
called up.' 'And me--'"

"To finish," cries Volpatte, silencing the hum with his authority of a
traveler returned from "down there," "to finish, I saw a whole legion
of 'em all together at a blow-out. For two days I was a sort of helper
in the kitchen of one of the centers of the C.O.A., 'cos they couldn't
let me do nothing while waiting for my reply, which didn't hurry,
seeing they'd sent another inquiry and a super-inquiry after it, and
the reply had too many halts to make in each office, going and coming.

"In short, I was cook in the shop. Once I waited at table, seeing that
the hea