He puckered his red eyebrows.  He would have liked to tell me all the splendor of his thoughts, but he knew not the art of expressing himself, so he was silent.  He remained alone in his voiceless emotion, as always alone.

We went forward side by side between the rows of houses.  In front of the doors, drays laden with casks were drawn up.  The front windows blossomed with many-hued heaps of jam-pots, stacks of tinder pipe-lighters—­everything that the soldier is compelled to buy.  Nearly all the natives had gone into grocery.  Business had been getting out of gear locally for a long time, but now it was booming.  Every one, smitten with the fever of sum-totals and dazzled by the multiplication table, plunged into trade.

Bells tolled, and the procession of a military funeral came out.  A forage wagon, driven by a transport man, carried a coffin wrapped in a flag.  Following, were a detachment of men, an adjutant, a padre, and a civilian.

“The poor little funeral with its tail lopped off!” said Lamuse.  “Ah, those that are dead are very happy.  But only sometimes, not always—­voila!”

We have passed the last of the houses.  In the country, beyond the end of the street, the fighting convoy and the regimental convoy have settled themselves, the traveling kitchens and jingling carts that follow them with odds and ends of equipment, the Red Cross wagons, the motor lorries, the forage carts, the baggage-master’s gig.  The tents of drivers and conductors swarm around the vehicles.  On the open spaces horses lift their metallic eyes to the sky’s emptiness, with their feet on barren earth.  Four poilus are setting up a table.  The open-air smithy is smoking.  This heterogeneous and swarming city, planted in ruined fields whose straight or winding ruts are stiffening in the heat, is already broadly valanced with rubbish and dung.

On the edge of the camp a big, white-painted van stands out from the others in its tidy cleanliness.  Had it been in the middle of a fair, one would have said it was the stylish show where one pays more than at the others.

This is the celebrated “stomatological” van that Blaire was asking about.  In point of fact, Blaire is there in front, looking at it.  For some long time, no doubt, he has been going round it and gazing.  Field-hospital orderly Sambremeuse, of the Division, returning from errands, is climbing the portable stair of painted wood which leads to the van door.  In his arms he carries a bulky box of biscuits, a loaf of fancy bread, and a bottle of champagne.  Blaire questions him—­“Tell me, Sir Rump, this horse-box—­is it the dentist’s?”

“It’s written up there,” replies Sambremeuse—­a little corpulent man, clean, close-shaven, and his chin starch-white.  “If you can’t see it, you don’t want the dentist to look after your grinders, you want the vet to clean your eyesight.”

Blaire comes nearer and scrutinizes the establishment.  “It’s a queer shop,” he says.  He goes nearer yet, draws back, hesitates to risk his gums in that carriage.  At last he decides, puts a foot on the stair, and disappears inside the caravan.