"Of course," says the child, tossing his head, "because we're
getting rich. He says, by the end of May, we shall have got fifty
thousand francs."

"Fifty thousand francs! Impossible!"

"Yes, yes!" the child insists, stamping, "he said it to mamma. Papa
wished it could be always like that. Mamma, sometimes, she isn't
sure, because my brother Adolphe is at the front. But we're going to
get him sent to the rear, and then the war can go on."

These confidences are disturbed by sharp cries, coming from the
rooms of our hosts. Biquet the mobile goes to inquire. "It's
nothing," says he, coming back; "it's the good man slanging the
woman because she doesn't know how to do things, he says, because
she's made the mustard in a tumbler, and he never heard of such a
thing, he says."

We get up, and leave the strong odor of pipes, wine, and stale
coffee in our cave. As soon as we have crossed the threshold, a
heaviness of heat puffs in our faces, fortified by the mustiness of
frying that dwells in the kitchen and emerges every time the door is
opened. We pass through legions of flies which, massed on the walls
in black hordes, fly abroad in buzzing swarms as we pass: "It's
beginning again like last year! Flies outside, lice inside.--"

"And microbes still farther inside!"

In a corner of this dirty little house and its litter of old
rubbish, its dusty debris of last year and the relics of so many