“He, he!  They are drinking coffee,” he remarks.

“They call it ‘the juice,’” corrects the magpie-man.

“Is it good, my friends?” The soldier, abashed in his turn by this alien and unusual visitation, grunts, giggles, and reddens, and the gentleman says, “He, he!” Then, with a slight motion of the head, he withdraws backwards.

The assemblage, with its neutral shades of civilian cloth and its sprinkling of bright military hues—­like geraniums and hortensias in the dark soil of a flowerbed—­oscillates, then passes, and moves off the opposite way it came.  One of the officers was heard to say, “We have yet much to see, messieurs les journalistes.”

When the radiant spectacle has faded away, we look at each other.  Those who had fled into the funk-holes now gradually and head first disinter themselves.  The group recovers itself and shrugs its shoulders.

“They’re journalists,” says Tirette.

“Journalists?”

“Why, yes, the individuals that lay the newspapers.  You don’t seem to catch on, fathead.  Newspapers must have chaps to write ’em.”

“Then it’s those that stuff up our craniums?” says Marthereau.

Barque assumes a shrill treble, and pretending that he has a newspaper in front of his nose, recites—­“’The Crown Prince is mad, after having been killed at the beginning of the campaign, and meanwhile he has all the diseases you can name.  William will die this evening, and again to-morrow.  The Germans have no more munitions and are chewing wood.  They cannot hold out, according to the most authoritative calculations, beyond the end of the week.  We can have them when we like, with their rifles slung.  If one can wait a few days longer, there will be no desire to forsake the life of the trenches.  One is so comfortable there, with water and gas laid on, and shower-baths at every step.  The only drawback is that it is rather too hot in winter.  As for the Austrians, they gave in a long time since and are only pretending.’  For fifteen months now it’s been like that, and you can hear the editor saying to his scribes, ’Now, boys, get into it!  Find some way of brushing that up again for me in five secs, and make it spin out all over those four damned white sheets that we’ve got to mucky.’”

“Ah, yes!” says Fouillade.

“Look here, corporal; you’re making fun of it—­isn’t it true what I said?”

“There’s a little truth in it, but you’re too slashing on the poor boys, and you’d be the first to make a song about it if you had to go without papers.  Oui, when the paper-man’s going by, why do you all shout, ’Here, here’?”

“And what good can you get out of them all?” cries Papa Blaire.  “Read ’em by the tubful if you like, but do the same as me—­don’t believe ’em!”

“Oui, oui, that’s enough about them.  Turn the page over, donkey-nose.”

The conversation is breaking up; interest in it follows suit and is scattered.  Four poilus join in a game of manille, that will last until night blacks out the cards.  Volpatte is trying to catch a leaf of cigarette paper that has escaped his fingers and goes hopping and dodging in the wind along the wall of the trench like a fragile butterfly.