Six men go by, led by a quartermaster corporal.  They carry heaps of new greatcoats and bundles of boots.  Lamuse regards his bloated and horny feet—­“I must have some new sheds, and no mistake; a bit more and you’ll see my splay-feet through these ones.  Can’t go marching on the skin of my tongs, eh?”

An aeroplane booms overhead.  We follow its evolutions with our faces skyward, our necks twisted, our eyes watering at the piercing brightness of the sky.

Lamuse declares to me, when we have brought our gaze back to earth, “Those machines’ll never become practical, never.”

“How can you say that?  Look at the progress they’ve made already, and the speed of it.”

“Yes, but they’ll stop there.  They’ll never do any better, never.”

This time I do not challenge the dull and obstinate denial that ignorance opposes to the promise of progress, and I let my big comrade alone in his stubborn belief that the wonderful effort of science and industry has been suddenly cut short.

Having thus begun to reveal to me his inmost thoughts, Lamuse continues.  Coming nearer and lowering his head, he says to me, “You know she’s here—­Eudoxie?”

“Ah!” said I.

“Yes, old chap.  You never notice anything, you don’t, but I noticed,” and Lamuse smiles at me indulgently.  “Now, do you catch on?  If she’s come here, it’s because we interest her, eh?  She’s followed us for one of us, and don’t you forget it.”

He gets going again.  “My boy, d’you want to know what I say?  She’s come after me.”

“Are you sure of it, old chap?”

“Yes,” says the ox-man, in a hollow voice.  “First, I want her.  Then, twice, old man, I’ve found her exactly in my path, in mine, d’you understand?  You may tell me that she ran away; that’s because she’s timid, that, yes—­”

He stopped dead in the middle of the street and looked straight at me.  The heavy face, greasily moist on the cheeks and nose, was serious.  His rotund fist went up to the dark yellow mustache, so carefully pointed, and smoothed it tenderly.  Then he continued to lay bare his heart to me “I want her; but, you know, I shall marry her all right, I shall.  She’s called Eudoxie Dumail.  At first, I wasn’t thinking of marrying her.  But since I’ve got to know her family name, it seems to me that it’s different, and I should get on all right.  Ah, nom de Dieu!  She’s so pretty, that woman!  And it’s not only that she’s pretty—­ah!”

The huge child was overflowing with sentiment and emotion, and trying to make them speak to me.  “Ah, my boy, there are times when I’ve just got to hold myself back with a hook,” came the strained and gloomy tones, while the blood flushed to the fleshy parts of his cheeks and neck.  “She’s so beautiful, she’s—­and me I’m—­she’s so unlike—­you’ll have noticed it, surely, you that notices—­she’s a country girl, oui; eh bien, she’s got a God knows what that’s better than a Parisienne, even a toffed-up and stylish Parisienne, pas?  She—­as for me, I—­”