Maurice Roger was ordered from his battalion to Colonel Lantz, and did
his duty like a true soldier's son, following his chief into the most
perilous positions, and he no longer lowered his head or bent his
shoulders at the whistling of a bomb. It was genuine military blood that
flowed in his veins, and he did not fear death; but life in the open air,
absence from his wife, the state of excitement produced by the war, and
this eagerness for pleasure common to all those who risk their lives, had
suddenly awakened his licentious temperament. When his service allowed
him to do so, he would go into Paris and spend twenty-four hours there,
profiting by it to have a champagne dinner at Brebant's or Voisin's, in
company with some beautiful girl, and to eat the luxurious dishes of that
time, such as beans, Gruyere cheese, and the great rarity which had been
secretly raised for three months on the fifth floor, a leg of mutton.

One evening Amedee Violette was belated upon the boulevards, and saw
coming out of a restaurant Maurice in full uniform, with one of the
pretty comedienes from the Varietes leaning upon his arm. This meeting
gave Amedee one heart-ache the more. It was for such a husband as this,
then, that Maria, buried in some country place, was probably at this very
time overwhelmed with fears about his safety. It was for this
incorrigible rake that she had disdained her friend from childhood,
and scorned the most delicate, faithful, and tender of lovers.

Finally, to kill time and to flee from solitude, Amedee went to the Cafe
de Seville, but he only found a small group of his former acquaintances
there. No more literary men, or almost none. The "long-haired" ones had
to-day the "regulation cut," and wore divers head-gears, for the most of
the scattered poets carried cartridge-boxes and guns; but some of the
political "beards" had not renounced their old customs; the war and the