re was no clean spot anywhere to put anything down in that
universal streaming of earth and sky, he thrust his towel into the
waistband of his trousers, while the soap went back into his pocket
every time he used it.

They who still remained wondered at this heroic gesticulation in the
face of adversity, and said again, as they wagged their heads, "It's a
disease of cleanliness he's got."

"You know he's going to be carpeted, they say, for that affair of the
shell-hole with Volpatte." And they mixed the two exploits together in
a muddled way, that of the shell-hole, and the present, and looked on
him as the hero of the moment, while he puffed, sniffled, grunted,
spat, and tried to dry himself under the celestial shower-bath with
rapid rubbing and as a measure of deception; then at last he resumed
his clothes.

* * * * *

After his wash, Fouillade feels cold. He turns about and stands in the
doorway of the barn that shelters us. The arctic blast discolors and
disparages his long face, so hollow and sunburned; it draws tears from
his eyes, and scatters them on the cheeks once scorched by the mistral;
his nose, too, weeps increasingly.

Yielding to the ceaseless bite of the wind that grips his ears in spite
of the muffler knotted round his head, and his calves in spite of the
yellow puttees with which his cockerel legs are enwound, he reenters
the barn, but comes out of it again at once, rolling ferocious eyes,
and muttering oaths with the accent one hears in that corner of the
land, over six hundred miles from here, whence he was driven by war.

So he stands outside, erect, more truly excited than ever before in
these northern scenes. And the wind comes and steals into him, and
comes again roughly, shaking and maltreating his scarecrow's slight and
flesh-less figure.

Ye gods! It is almost uninhabitable, the barn they have assigned to us
to live in during this period of rest. It is a collapsing refuge,
gloomy and leaky, confined as a well. One half of it is under water--we
see rats swimming in it--and the men are crowded in the other half. The
walls, composed of laths stuck together with dried mud, are cracked,
sunken, holed in all their circuit, and extensively broken through
above. The night we got here--until the morning--we plugged as well as
we could the openings within reach, by inserting leafy branches and
hurdles. But the higher holes, and those in the roof, still gaped and
alway