so emaciated himself that one could fancy his feet were fastened to
his trunk by strings through his flopping trousers.

And among the idle poilus of the guard-room at the end of the place,
under the wing of the shaking and rattling signboard which serves as
advertisement of the village, [note 3] a conversation is set up on
the subject of this wandering buffoon.

"He has a dirty neb," says Bigornot; "and I'll tell you what I
think--they've no business to let civvies mess about at the front
with their pretty ringlets, and especially individuals that you
don't know where they come from."

"You're quite crushing, you portable louse," replies Cornet.

"Never mind, shoe-sole face," Bigornot insists; "we trust 'em too
much. I know what I'm saying when I open it."

"You don't," says Canard. "Pepere's going to the
rear."

"The women here," murmurs La Mollette, "they're ugly; they're a lot
of frights."

The other men on guard, their concentrated gaze roaming in space,
watch two enemy aeroplanes and the intricate skeins they are
spinning. Around the stiff mechanical birds up there that appear now
black like crows and now white like gulls, according to the play of
the light, clouds of bursting shrapnel stipple the azure, and seem
like a long flight of snowflakes in the sunshine.