The smokers spit in a circle, just at the mouth of the dug-out which most of the half-section inhabit, and flood with tobacco-stained saliva the place where they put their hands and feet when they flatten themselves to get in or out.

But who notices such a detail?

* * * * * *

Now, a propos of a letter to Marthereau from his wife, they discuss produce.

“La mere Marthereau has written,” he says.  “That fat pig we’ve got at home, a fine specimen, guess how much she’s worth now?”

But the subject of domestic economy degenerates suddenly into a fierce altercation between Pepin and Tulacque.  Words of quite unmistakable significance are exchanged.  Then—­“I don’t care a what you say or what you don’t say!  Shut it up!”—­“I shall shut it when I want, midden!”—­“A seven-pound thump would shut it up quick enough!”—­“Who from?  Who’ll give it me?”—­“Come and find out!”

They grind their teeth and approach each other in a foaming rage.  Tulacque grasps his prehistoric ax, and his squinting eyes are flashing.  The other is pale and his eyes have a greenish glint; you can see in his blackguard face that his thoughts are with his knife.

But between the two, as they grip each other in looks and mangle in words, Lamuse intervenes with his huge pacific head, like a baby’s, and his face of sanguinary hue:  “Allons, allons!  You’re not going to cut yourselves up!  Can’t be allowed!”

The others also interpose, and the antagonists are separated, but they continue to hurl murderous looks at each other across the barrier of their comrades.  Pepin mutters a residue of slander in tones that quiver with malice—­

“The hooligan, the ruffian, the blackguard!  But wait a bit!  I’ll see him later about this!”

On the other side, Tulacque confides in the poilu who is beside him:  “That crab-louse!  Non, but you know what he is!  You know—­there’s no more to be said.  Here, we’ve got to rub along with a lot of people that we don’t know from Adam.  We know ’em and yet we don’t know ’em; but that man, if he thinks he can mess me about, he’ll find himself up the wrong street!  You wait a bit.  I’ll smash him up one of these days, you’ll see!”

Meanwhile the general conversation is resumed, drowning the last twin echoes of the quarrel.

“It’s every day alike, alors!” says Paradis to me; “yesterday it was Plaisance who wanted to let Fumex have it heavy on the jaw, about God knows what—­a matter of opium pills, I think.  First it’s one and then it’s another that talks of doing some one in.  Are we getting to be a lot of wild animals because we look like ’em?”

“Mustn’t take them too seriously, these men,” Lamuse declares; “they’re only kids.”

“True enough, seeing that they’re men.”

* * * * * *