We knock at door after door, we show ourselves timidly, we offer ourselves like undesirable goods.  A voice arises among us, “You haven’t a bit of a corner, madame, for some soldiers?  We would pay.”

“No—­you see, I’ve got officers—­under-officers, that is—­you see, it’s the mess for the band, and the secretaries, and the gentlemen of the ambulance—­”

Vexation after vexation.  We close again, one after the other, all the doors we had half-opened, and look at each other, on the wrong side of the threshold, with dwindling hope in our eyes.

“Bon Dieu!  You’ll see that we shan’t find anything,” growls Barque.  “Damn those chaps that got on the midden before us!”

The human flood reaches high-water mark everywhere.  The three streets are all growing dark as each overflows into another.  Some natives cross our path, old men or ill-shapen, contorted in their walk, stunted in the face; and even young people, too, over whom hovers the mystery of secret disorders or political connections.  As for the petticoats, there are old women and many young ones—­fat, with well-padded cheeks, and equal to geese in their whiteness.

Suddenly, in an alley between two houses, I have a fleeting vision of a woman who crossed the shadowy gap—­Eudoxie!  Eudoxie, the fairy woman whom Lamuse hunted like a satyr, away back in the country, that morning we brought back Volpatte wounded, and Fouillade, the woman I saw leaning from the spinney’s edge and bound to Farfadet in a mutual smile.  It is she whom I just glimpsed like a gleam of sunshine in that alley.  But the gleam was eclipsed by the tail of a wall, and the place thereof relapsed upon gloom.  She here, already!  Then she has followed our long and painful trek!  She is attracted—?

And she looks like one allured, too.  Brief glimpse though it was of her face and its crown of fair hair, plainly I saw that she was serious, thoughtful, absentminded.

Lamuse, following close on my heels, saw nothing, and I do not tell him.  He will discover quite soon enough the bright presence of that lovely flame where he would fain cast himself bodily, though it evades him like a Will-o’-th’-wisp.  For the moment, besides, we are on business bent.  The coveted corner must be won.  We resume the hunt with the energy of despair.  Barque leads us on; he has taken the matter to heart.  He is trembling—­you can see it in his dusty scalp.  He guides us, nose to the wind.  He suggests that we make an attempt on that yellow door over there.  Forward!

Near the yellow door, we encounter a shape down-bent.  Blaire, his foot on a milestone, is reducing the bulk of his boot with his knife, and plaster-like debris is falling fast.  He might be engaged in sculpture.

“You never had your feet so white before,” jeers Barque.  “Rotting apart,” says Blaire, “you don’t know where it is, that special van?” He goes on to explain:  “I’ve got to look up the dentist-van, so they can grapple with my ivories, and strip off the old grinders that’s left.  Oui, seems it’s stationed here, the chop-caravan.”