The throng increases the nearer we draw to the middle of the village.  We salute the commandant and the black-skirted padre who walks by the other’s side like his nurse.  We are questioned by Pigeon, Guenon, young Escutenaire, and Chasseur Clodore.  Lamuse appears blind and deaf, and concerned only to walk.

Bizouarne, Chanrion, and Roquette arrive excitedly to announce big news—­“D’you know, Pepere’s going to the rear.”

“Funny,” says Biquet, raising his nose from his letter, “how people kid themselves.  The old woman’s bothered about me!” He shows me a passage in the maternal epistle:  “‘When you get my letter,’” he spells out, “’no doubt you will be in the cold and mud, deprived of everything, mon pauvre Eugene’” He laughs:  “It’s ten days since she put that down for me, and she’s clean off it.  We’re not cold, ’cos it’s been fine since this morning; and we’re not miserable, because we’ve got a room that’s good enough.  We’ve had hard times, but we’re all right now.”

As we reach the kennel in which we are lodgers, we are thinking that sentence over.  Its touching simplicity affects me, shows me a soul—­a host of souls.  Because the sun has shown himself, because we have felt a gleam and a similitude of comfort, suffering exists no longer, either of the past or the terrible future.  “We’re all right now.”  There is no more to say.

Biquet establishes himself at the table, like a gentleman, to write a reply.  Carefully he lays abroad his pen ink, and paper, and examines each, then smilingly traces the strictly regular lines of his big handwriting across the meager page.

“You’d laugh,” he says, “if you knew what I’ve written to the old woman.”  He reads his letter again, fondles it, and smiles to himself.

______

[note 1:] Pity to spoil this jest by translation, but Biquet’s primary meaning was “You’re cross because you’ve a throat like a lime-kiln.”  His secondary or literal meaning is obvious.—­Tr.

[note 2:] See p. 34 ante; [chapter 5, note 3] another reference to the famous phrase.  “Pourvu que les civils tiennent.”—­Tr.

[note 3:] Every French village has a plaque attached to the first house on each road of approach, giving its name and the distance to the next.—­Tr.

6

Habits

We are enthroned in the back yard.  The big hen, white as a cream cheese, is brooding in the depths of a basket near the coop whose imprisoned occupant is rummaging about.  But the black hen is free to travel.  She erects and withdraws her elastic neck in jerks, and advances with a large and affected gait.  One can just see her profile and its twinkling spangle, and her talk appears to proceed from a metal spring.  She marches, glistening black and glossy like the love-locks of a gypsy; and as she marches, she unfolds here and there upon the ground a faint trail of chickens.

These trifling little yellow balls, kept always by a whispering instinct on the ebb-tide to safety, hurry along under the maternal march in short, sharp jerks, pecking as they go.  Now the train comes to a full stop, for two of the chickens are thoughtful and immobile, careless of the parental clucking.