that the head cook had just got back from leave for the fourth time
and was tired. I saw and I heard those people every time I went into
the dining-room, that was in the Prefecture, and all that hot and
illuminated row got into my head. They were only auxiliaries in
there, but there were plenty of the armed service among the number,
too. They were almost all old men, with a few young ones besides,
sitting here and there.

"I'd begun to get about enough of it when one of the broomsticks
said, 'The shutters must be closed; it's more prudent.' My boy. they
were a lump of a hundred and twenty-five miles from the firing-line,
but that pock-marked puppy he wanted to make believe there was
danger of bombardment by aircraft--"

"And there's my cousin," said Tulacque, fumbling, "who wrote to
me--Look, here's what he says: 'Mon cher Adolphe, here I am
definitely settled in Paris as attache to Guard-Room 60.
While you are down there. I must stay in the capital at the mercy of
a Taube or a Zeppelin!'"

The phrase sheds a tranquil delight abroad, and we assimilate it
like a tit-bit, laughing.

"After that," Volpatte went on, "those layers of soft-jobbers fed me
up still more. As a dinner it was all right--cod, seeing it was
Friday, but prepared like soles a la Marguerite--I know all
about it. But the talk!--"

"They call the bayonet Rosalie, don't they?"