says Lamuse admiringly, forced back by a wave of artillerymen
carrying boxes.

"That's true," Marthereau admits; "to get all this lot on the way,
you've not got to be a lot of turnip-heads nor a lot of
custards--Bon Dieu, look where you're putting your damned boots, you
black-livered beast!"

"Talk about a flitting! When I went to live at Marcoussis with my
family, there was less fuss than this. But then I'm not built that
way myself."

We are silent; and then we hear Cocon saying, "For the whole French
Army that holds the lines to go by--I'm not speaking of those who
are fixed up at the rear, where there are twice as many men again,
and services like the ambulance that cost nine million francs and
can clear you seven thousand cases a day--to see them go by in
trains of sixty coaches each, following each other without stopping,
at intervals of a quarter of an hour, it would take forty days and
forty nights."

"Ah!" they say. It is too much effort for their imagination; they
lose interest and sicken of the magnitude of these figures. They
yawn, and with watering eyes they follow, in the confusion of haste
and shouts and smoke, of roars and gleams and flashes, the terrible
line of the armored train that moves in the distance, with fire in
the sky behind it.

______