mentioned and that I'd been to, and the sergeant floundering about
behind a hillock of papers at the top of it and giving orders, a
simpleton was doing nothing but tap on his blotting-pad with his
hands. His job, the mug, was the department of leave-papers, and as
the big push had begun and all leave was stopped, he hadn't anything
to do--'Capital!' he says.

"And all that, that's one table in one room in one department in one
depot. I've seen more, and then more, and more and more again. I
don't know, but it's enough to drive you off your nut, I tell you."

"Have they got brisques?" [note 2]

"Not many there, but in the department of the second line every one
had 'em. You had museums of 'em there--whole Zoological Gardens of
stripes."

"Prettiest thing I've seen in the way of stripes," said Tulacque,
"was a motorist, dressed in cloth that you'd have said was satin,
with new stripes, and the leathers of an English officer, though a
second-class soldier as he was. With his finger on his cheek, he
leaned with his elbows on that fine carriage adorned with windows
that he was the valet de chambre of. He'd have made you sick, the
dainty beast. He was just exactly the poilu that you see pictures of
in the ladies' papers--the pretty little naughty papers."

Each has now his memories, his tirade on this much-excogitated
subject of the shirkers, and all begin to overflow and to talk at
once. A hubbub surrounds the foot of the mean wall where we are
heaped like bundles, with a gray, muddy, and trampled spectacle