Early the next morning the 106th was bundled into cattle-cars and
started off among the first. The car that contained Jean's squad was
particularly crowded, so much so that Loubet declared there was not
even room in it to sneeze. It was a load of humanity, sent off to the
war just as a load of sacks would have been dispatched to the mill,
crowded in so as to get the greatest number into the smallest space,
and as rations had been given out in the usual hurried, slovenly
manner and the men had received in brandy what they should have
received in food, the consequence was that they were all roaring
drunk, with a drunkenness that vented itself in obscene songs, varied
by shrieks and yells. The heavy train rolled slowly onward; pipes were
alight and men could no longer see one another through the dense
clouds of smoke; the heat and odor that emanated from that mass of
perspiring human flesh were unendurable, while from the jolting, dingy
van came volleys of shouts and laughter that drowned the monotonous
rattle of the wheels and were lost amid the silence of the deserted
fields. And it was not until they reached Langres that the troops
learned that they were being carried back to Paris.

"Ah, _nom de Dieu!_" exclaimed Chouteau, who already, by virtue of his
oratorical ability, was the acknowledged sovereign of his corner,
"they will station us at Charentonneau, sure, to keep old Bismarck out
of the Tuileries."

The others laughed loud and long, considering the joke a very good
one, though no one could say why. The most trivial incidents of the
journey, however, served to elicit a storm of yells, cat-calls, and
laughter: a group of peasants standing beside the roadway, or the
anxious faces of the people who hung about the way-stations in the