They began to meet soldiers with packs and pails of water who were soon lost in the tortuous cross roads.  Some, seated on piles of wood, were smiling as they read a little periodical published in the trenches.

The soldiers stepped aside to make way for the visiting procession, bearded and curious faces peeping out of the alleyways.  Afar off sounded a crackling of short snaps as though at the end of the winding lanes were a shooting lodge where a group of sportsmen were killing pigeons.

The morning was still cloudy and cold.  In spite of the humid atmosphere, a buzzing like that of a horsefly, hummed several times above the two visitors.

“Bullets!” said their conductor laconically.

Desnoyers meanwhile had lowered his head a little, he knew perfectly well that insectivorous sound.  The senator walked on more briskly, temporarily forgetting his weariness.

They came to a halt before a lieutenant-colonel who received them like an engineer exhibiting his workshops, like a naval officer showing off the batteries and turrets of his battleships.  He was the Chief of the battalion occupying this section of the trenches.  Don Marcelo studied him with special interest, knowing that his son was under his orders.

To the two friends, these subterranean fortifications bore a certain resemblance to the lower parts of a vessel.  They passed from trench to trench of the last line, the oldest—­dark galleries into which penetrated streaks of light across the loopholes and broad, low windows of the mitrailleuse.  The long line of defense formed a tunnel cut by short, open spaces.  They had to go stumbling from light to darkness, and from darkness to light with a visual suddenness very fatiguing to the eyes.  The ground was higher in the open spaces.  There were wooden benches placed against the sides so that the observers could put out the head or examine the landscape by means of the periscope.  The enclosed space answered both for batteries and sleeping quarters.

As the enemy had been repelled and more ground had been gained, the combatants who had been living all winter in these first quarters, had tried to make themselves more comfortable.  Over the trenches in the open air, they had laid beams from the ruined houses; over the beams, planks, doors and windows, and on top of the wood, layers of sacks of earth.  These sacks were covered by a top of fertile soil from which sprouted grass and herbs, giving the roofs of the trenches, an appearance of pastoral placidity.  The temporary arches could thus resist the shock of the abuses which went ploughing into the earth without causing any special damage.  When an explosion was pounding too noisily and weakening the structure, the troglodytes would swarm out in the night like watchful ants, and skilfully readjust the roof of their primitive dwellings.

Everything appeared clean with that simple and rather clumsy cleanliness exercised by men living far from women and thrown upon their own resources.  The galleries were something like the cloisters of a monastery, the corridors of a prison, and the middle sections of a ship.  Their floors were a half yard lower than that of the open spaces which joined the trenches together.  In order that the officers might avoid so many ups and downs, some planks had been laid, forming a sort of scaffolding from doorway to doorway.