rom one corner to
another. At the back, on the right and on the left, the pale gleams of
two candles, each with the round halo of a distant moon allow you at
last to make out the human shape of these masses, whose mouths emit
either steam or thick smoke.

Our hazy retreat, which I allow carefully to swallow me whole, is a
scene of excitement this evening. We leave for the trenches to-morrow
morning, and the nebulous tenants of the barn are beginning to pack up.

Although darkness falls on my eyes and chokes them as I come in from
the pallid evening, I still dodge the snares spread over the ground by
water-bottles, mess-tins and weapons, but I butt full into the loaves
that are packed together exactly in the middle, like the paving of a
yard. I reach my corner. Something alive is there with a huge back,
fleecy and rounded, squatting and stooping over a collection of little
things that glitter on the ground, and I tap the shoulder upholstered
in sheepskin. The being turns round, and by the dull and fitful gleam
of a candle which a bayonet stuck in the ground upholds, I see one half
of a face, an eye, the end of a mustache, and the corner of a half-open
mouth. It growls in a friendly way, and resumes the inspection of its
possessions.

"What are you doing there?"

"I'm fixing things, and clearing up."

The quasi-brigand who appears to be checking his booty, is my comrade
Volpatte. He has folded his tent-cloth in four and placed it on his
bed--that is, on the truss of straw assigned to him--and on this carpet
he has emptied and displayed the contents of his pockets.

And it is quite a shop that he broods over with a housewife's
solicitous eyes, watchful and jealous, lest some one walks over him.
With my eye I tick off his copious exhibition.

Alongside his handkerchief, pipe, tobacco-pouch (which also contains a
note-book), knife, purse, and pocket pipe-lighter, which comprise the
necessary and indispensable groundwork, here are two leather laces
twisted like earthworms round a watch enclosed in a case of transparent
celluloid, which has curiously dulled and blanched with age. Then a
little round mirror, and another square one; this last, though broken,
is of better quality, and bevel-edged. A flask of essence of
turpentine, a flask of mineral oil nearly empty, and a third flask,
empty. A German belt-plate, bearing the device, "Gott mit uns"; a
dragoon's tassel of similar origin; half wrapped in paper, an aviator's