* * * * * *

The cafe has filled up with workmen, either old or very young, from the town and the country, but chiefly the country.

What are they doing, these lowly, these ill-paid?  They are dirty and they are drinking.  They are dark, although it is the forenoon, because they are dirty.  In the light there is that obscurity which they carry on them; and a bad smell removes itself with them.

I see three convalescent soldiers from the hospital join the plebeian groups; they are recognized by their coarse clothes, their caps and big boots, and because their gestures are soldered together and conform to a common movement.

By force of “glasses all round,” these drinkers begin to talk in loud voices; they get excited and shout at random; and in the end they drop visibly into unconsciousness, into oblivion, into defeat.

The wine-merchant is at his cash desk, which shines like silver.  He stands behind the center of it, colorless, motionless, like a bust on a pedestal.  His bare arms hang down, pallid as his face.  He comes and wipes away some spilled wine, and his hands shine and drip, like a butcher’s.

* * * * * *

“I’m forgetting to tell you,” cried Crillon, “that they had news of your regiment a few days ago.  Little Melusson’s had his head blown to bits in an attack.  Here, y’know; he was a softy and an idler.  Well, he was attacking like a devil.  War remakes men like that!”

“Termite?” I asked.

“Ah, yes!  Termite the poacher!  Why it’s a long time since they haven’t seen him.  Disappeared, it seems.  S’pose he’s killed.”

Then he talks to me of this place.  Brisbille, for instance, always the same, a Socialist and a scandal.

“There’s him,” says Crillon, “and that dangerous chap Eudo as well, with his notorient civilities.  Would you believe it, they’ve not been able to pinch him for his spying proclensities!  Nothing in his past life, nothing in his conductions, nothing in his expensiture, nothing to find fault with.  Mustn’t he be a deep one?”

I presume to think—­suppose it was all untrue?  Yet it seemed a formidable task to upset on the spot one of the oldest and most deeply rooted creeds in our town.  But I risk it.  “Perhaps he’s innocent.”

Crillon jumps, and shouts, “What!  You suspect him of being innocent!” His face is convulsed and he explodes with an enormous laugh, a laugh irresistible as a tidal wave, the laugh of all!

“Talking about Termite,” says Crillon a moment later, “it seems it wasn’t him that did the poaching.”

The military convalescents are leaving the tavern.  Crillon watches them go away with their parallel movements and their sticks.