"It will burn, corporal; I assure you it will--why don't you blow,
you!"

And by way of encouragement he bestowed a kick on Lapoulle, a colossus
of a man, who was on his knees puffing away with might and main, his
cheeks distended till they were like wine-skins, his face red and
swollen, and his eyes starting from their orbits and streaming with
tears. Two other men of the squad, Chouteau and Pache, the former
stretched at length upon his back like a man who appreciates the
delight of idleness, and the latter engrossed in the occupation of
putting a patch on his trousers, laughed long and loud at the
ridiculous expression on the face of their comrade, the brutish
Lapoulle.

Jean did not interfere to check their merriment. Perhaps the time was
at hand when they would not have much occasion for laughter, and he,
with all his seriousness and his humdrum, literal way of taking
things, did not consider that it was part of his duty to be
melancholy, preferring rather to close his eyes or look the other way
when his men were enjoying themselves. But his attention was attracted
to a second group not far away, another soldier of his squad, Maurice
Levasseur, who had been conversing earnestly for near an hour with a
civilian, a red-haired gentleman who was apparently about thirty-six
years old, with an intelligent, honest face, illuminated by a pair of
big protruding blue eyes, evidently the eyes of a near-sighted man.
They had been joined by an artilleryman, a quartermaster-sergeant from
the reserves, a knowing, self-satisfied-looking person with brown
mustache and imperial, and the three stood talking like old friends,
unmindful of what was going on about them.