“I haven’t saved any Frenchmen,” says Biquet, “but I’ve given some Boches the bitter pill.”  In the May attacks, he ran off in advance and was seen to disappear in the distance, but came back with four fine fellows in helmets.

“I, too,” says Tulacque, “I’ve killed some.”  Two months ago, with quaint vanity, he laid out nine in a straight row, in front of the taken trench.  “But,” he adds, “it’s always the Boche officer that I’m after.”

“Ah, the beasts!” The curse comes from several men at once and from the bottom of their hearts.

“Ah, mon vieux,” says Tirloir, “we talk about the dirty Boche race; but as for the common soldier, I don’t know if it’s true or whether we’re codded about that as well, and if at bottom they’re not men pretty much like us.”

“Probably they’re men like us,” says Eudore.

“Perhaps!” cries Cocon, “and perhaps not.”

“Anyway,” Tirloir goes on, “we’ve not got a dead set on the men, but on the German officers; non, non, non, they’re not men, they’re monsters.  I tell you, they’re really a specially filthy sort o’ vermin.  One might say that they’re the microbes of the war.  You ought to see them close to—­the infernal great stiff-backs, thin as nails, though they’ve got calf-heads.”

“And snouts like snakes.”

Tirloir continues:  “I saw one once, a prisoner, as I came back from liaison.  The beastly bastard!  A Prussian colonel, that wore a prince’s crown, so they told me, and a gold coat-of-arms.  He was mad because we took leave to graze against him when they were bringing him back along the communication trench, and he looked down on everybody—­like that.  I said to myself, ’Wait a bit, old cock, I’ll make you rattle directly!’ I took my time and squared up behind him, and kicked into his tailpiece with all my might.  I tell you, he fell down half-strangled.”

“Strangled?”

“Yes, with rage, when it dawned on him that the rump of an officer and nobleman had been bust in by the hobnailed socks of a poor private!  He went off chattering like a woman and wriggling like an epileptic—­”

“I’m not spiteful myself,” says Blaire, “I’ve got kiddies.  And it worries me, too, at home, when I’ve got to kill a pig that I know—­but those, I shall run ’em through—­Bing!—­full in the linen-cupboard.”

“I, too.”

“Not to mention,” says Pepin, “that they’ve got silver hats, and pistols that you can get four quid for whenever you like, and field-glasses that simply haven’t got a price.  Ah, bad luck, what a lot of chances I let slip in the early part of the campaign!  I was too much of a beginner then, and it serves me right.  But don’t worry, I shall get a silver hat.  Mark my words, I swear I’ll have one.  I must have not only the skin of one of Wilhelm’s red-tabs, but his togs as well.  Don’t fret yourself; I’ll fasten on to that before the war ends.”

“You think it’ll have an end, then?” asks some one.