“I’ve added a stewpan on the quiet for the soup,” he whispered to me.  Lifting the lid of the stove—­“Fire isn’t too hot.  It’s half an hour since I chucked the meat in, and the water’s clean yet.”

A minute later we heard some one arguing with the hostess.  This extra stove was the matter in dispute.  There was no more room left for her on her stove.  They had told her they would only need a casserole, and she had believed them.  If she had known they were going to make trouble she would not have let the room to them.  Barque, the good fellow, replied jokingly, and succeeded in soothing the monster.

One by one the others arrived.  They winked and rubbed their hands together, full of toothsome anticipation, like the guests at a wedding-breakfast.  As they break away from the dazzling light outside and penetrate this cube of darkness, they are blinded, and stand like bewildered owls for several minutes.

“It’s not too brilliant in here,” says Mesnil Joseph.  “Come, old chap, what do you want?” The others exclaim in chorus, “We’re damned well off here.”  And I can see heads nodding assent in the cavern’s twilight.

An incident:  Farfadet having by accident rubbed against the damp and dirty wall, his shoulder has brought away from it a smudge so big and black that it can be seen even here.  Farfadet, so careful of his appearance, growls, and in avoiding a second contact with the wall, knocks the table so that his spoon drops to the ground.  Stooping, he fumbles among the loose earth, where dust and spiders’ webs for years have silently fallen.  When he recovers his spoon it is almost black, and webby threads hang from it.  Evidently it is disastrous to let anything fall on the ground.  One must live here with great care.

Lamuse brings down his fat hand, like a pork-pie, between two of the places at table.  “Allons, a table!” We fall to.  The meal is abundant and of excellent quality.  The sound of conversation mingles with those of emptying bottles and filling jaws.  While we taste the joy of eating at a table, a glimmer of light trickles through a vent-hole, and wraps in dusty dawn a piece of the atmosphere and a patch of the table, while its reflex lights up a plate, a cap’s peak, an eye.  Secretly I take stock of this gloomy little celebration that overflows with gayety.  Biquet is telling about his suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman who would agree to do him the good turn of washing some linen, but “it was too damned dear.”  Tulacque describes the queue outside the grocer’s.  One might not go in; customers were herded outside, like sheep.  “And although you were outside, if you weren’t satisfied, and groused too much, they chased you off.”

Any news yet?  It is said that severe penalties have been imposed on those who plunder the population, and there is already a list of convictions.  Volpatte has been sent down.  Men of Class ’93 are going to be sent to the rear, and Pepere is one of them.