“About a dozen.”

“A dozen.  Jesus Maria!”

“What does it matter?  That’ll be all right, seeing there’s a plank here—­and that’s a bench ready-made, eh, Lamuse?”

“Course,” says Lamuse.

“I want that plank,” says the woman.  “Some soldiers that were here before you have tried already to take it away.”

“But us, we’re not thieves,” suggests Lamuse gently, so as not to irritate the creature that has our comfort at her disposal.

“I don’t say you are, but soldiers, vous savez, they smash everything up.  Oh, the misery of this war!”

“Well then, how much’ll it be, to hire the table, and to heat up a thing or two on the stove?”

“It’ll be twenty sous a day,” announces the hostess with restraint, as though we were wringing that amount from her.

“It’s dear,” says Lamuse.

“It’s what the others gave me that were here, and they were very kind, too, those gentlemen, and it was worth my while to cook for them.  I know it’s not difficult for soldiers.  If you think it’s too much, it’s no job to find other customers for this room and this table and the stove, and who wouldn’t be in twelves.  They’re coming along all the time, and they’d pay still more, if I wanted.  A dozen!—­”

Lamuse hastens to add, “I said ‘It’s dear,’ but still, it’ll do, eh, you others?” On this downright question we record our votes.

“We could do well with a drop to drink,” says Lamuse.  “Do you sell wine?”

“No,” said the woman, but added, shaking with anger, “You see, the military authority forces them that’s got wine to sell it at fifteen sous!  Fifteen sous!  The misery of this cursed war!  One loses at it, at fifteen sous, monsieur.  So I don’t sell any wine.  I’ve got plenty for ourselves.  I don’t say but sometimes, and just to oblige, I don’t allow some to people that one knows, people that knows what things are, but of course, messieurs, not at fifteen sous.”

Lamuse is one of those people “that knows what things are.”  He grabs at his water-bottle, which is hanging as usual on his hip.  “Give me a liter of it.  That’ll be what?”

“That’ll be twenty-two sous, same as it cost me.  But you know it’s just to oblige you, because you’re soldiers.”

Barque, losing patience, mutters an aside.  The woman throws him a surly glance, and makes as if to hand Lamuse’s bottle back to him.  But Lamuse, launched upon the hope of drinking wine at last, so that his cheeks redden as if the draught already pervaded them with its grateful hue, hastens to intervene—­

“Don’t be afraid—­it’s between ourselves, la mere, we won’t give you away.”

She raves on, rigid and bitter, against the limited price on wine; and, overcome by his lusty thirst, Lamuse extends the humiliation and surrender of conscience so far as to say, “No help for it, madame!  It’s a military order, so it’s no use trying to understand it.”