the name, with the panic and confusion of a flock of sheep on its way
to the shambles.

Rochas stood listening, open-mouthed, and with staring eyes; his
terrible nose dilated visibly. Then suddenly his lantern jaws parted
to emit an obstreperous, Homeric peal of laughter.

"What are you giving us there, you? what do you mean by all that silly
lingo? Why, there is not the first word of sense in your whole
harangue--it is too idiotic to deserve an answer. Go and tell those
things to the recruits, but don't tell them to me; no! not to me, who
have seen twenty-seven years of service."

And he gave himself a thump on the breast with his doubled fist. He
was the son of a master mason who had come from Limousin to Paris,
where the son, not taking kindly to the paternal handicraft, had
enlisted at the age of eighteen. He had been a soldier of fortune and
had carried the knapsack, was corporal in Africa, sergeant in the
Crimea, and after Solferino had been made lieutenant, having devoted
fifteen years of laborious toil and heroic bravery to obtaining that
rank, and was so illiterate that he had no chance of ever getting his
captaincy.

"You, sir, who think you know everything, let me tell you a thing you
don't know. Yes, at Mazagran I was scarce nineteen years old, and
there were twenty-three of us, not a living soul more, and for more
than four days we held out against twelve thousand Arabs. Yes, indeed!
for years and years, if you had only been with us out there in Africa,
sir, at Mascara, at Biskra, at Dellys, after that in Grand Kabylia,
after that again at Laghouat, you would have seen those dirty niggers