But he went off to see what was going on, while Chouteau, the company artist, house-painter by trade at Belleville, something of a dandy and a revolutionary republican, exasperated against the government for having called him back to the colors after he had served his time, was cruelly chaffing Pache, whom he had discovered on his knees, behind the tent, preparing to say his prayers.  There was a pious man for you!  Couldn’t he oblige him, Chouteau, by interceding with God to give him a hundred thousand francs or some such small trifle?  But Pache, an insignificant little fellow with a head running up to a point, who had come to them from some hamlet in the wilds of Picardy, received the other’s raillery with the uncomplaining gentleness of a martyr.  He was the butt of the squad, he and Lapoulle, the colossal brute who had got his growth in the marshes of the Sologne, so utterly ignorant of everything that on the day of his joining the regiment he had asked his comrades to show him the King.  And although the terrible tidings of the disaster at Froeschwiller had been known throughout the camp since early morning, the four men laughed, joked, and went about their usual tasks with the indifference of so many machines.

But there arose a murmur of pleased surprise.  It was occasioned by Jean, the corporal, coming back from the commissary’s, accompanied by Maurice, with a load of firewood.  So, they were giving out wood at last, the lack of which the night before had deprived the men of their soup!  Twelve hours behind time, only!

“Hurrah for the commissary!” shouted Chouteau.

“Never mind, so long as it is here,” said Loubet.  “Ah! won’t I make you a bully pot-au-feu!”

He was usually quite willing to take charge of the mess arrangements, and no one was inclined to say him nay, for he cooked like an angel.  On those occasions, however, Lapoulle would be given the most extraordinary commissions to execute.

“Go and look after the champagne—­Go out and buy some truffles—­”

On that morning a queer conceit flashed across his mind, such a conceit as only a Parisian gamin contemplating the mystification of a greenhorn is capable of entertaining: 

“Look alive there, will you!  Come, hand me the chicken.”

“The chicken! what chicken, where?”

“Why, there on the ground at your feet, stupid; the chicken that I promised you last night, and that the corporal has just brought in.”

He pointed to a large, white, round stone, and Lapoulle, speechless with wonder, finally picked it up and turned it about between his fingers.

“A thousand thunders!  Will you wash the chicken!  More yet; wash its claws, wash its neck!  Don’t be afraid of the water, lazybones!”

And for no reason at all except the joke of it, because the prospect of the soup made him gay and sportive, he tossed the stone along with the meat into the kettle filled with water.