st. He lives
in perpetual bewilderment and distress that everybody does not think as
he does. He exerts real influence, for there are, in the multitudes,
whatever they may say, beautiful and profound instincts always near the
surface.

The captain, who was a well-balanced man, although severe and prodigal
of prison when he found the least gap in our loads, considered the
adjutant animated by an excellent spirit, but he himself was not so
fiery. I was getting a better opinion of him; he could judge men. He
had said that I was a good and conscientious soldier, that many like me
were wanted.

Our lieutenant, who was very young, seemed to be an amiable,
good-natured fellow. "He's a good little lad," said the grateful men;
"there's some that frighten you when you speak to them, and they solder
their jaws up. But _him_, he speaks to you even if you're stupid.
When you talk to him about you and your family, which isn't, all the
same, very interesting, well, he listens to you, old man."

* * * * * *

St. Martin's summer greatly warmed us as we tramped into a new village.
I remember that one of those days I took Margat with me and went with
him into a recently shelled house. (Margat was storming against the
local grocer, the only one of his kind, the inevitable and implacable
robber of his customers.) The framework of the house was laid bare, it
was full of light and plaster, and it trembled like a steamboat. We
climbed to the drawing-room of this house which had breathed forth all
its mystery and was worse than empty. The room still showed remains of
luxury and elegance--a disemboweled piano with clusters of protruding
strings; a cupboard, dislodged and rotting, as though disinterred; a
white-powdered floor, sown with golden stripes and rumpled books, and
with fragile debris which cried out when we trod on it. Across the
window, which was framed in broken glass, a curtain hung by one corner
and fluttered like a bat. Over the sundered fireplace, only a mirror
was intact and unsullied, upright in its frame.

Then, become suddenly and profoundly like each other, we were both
fascinated by the virginity of that long glass. Its perfect integrity
lent it something like a body. Each of us picked up a brick and we
broke it with all our might, not knowing why. We ran away down the
shaking spiral stairs whose steps were hidden under deep rubbish. At
the bottom we looked at each oth