replied an individual, 'that at thirty-seven I've arrived at the age
when I must take care of myself!' And while the fellow was saying
that, I was thinking of Dumont the gamekeeper, who was forty-two,
and was done in close to me on Hill 132, so near that after he got
the handful of bullets in his head, my body shook with the trembling
of his."

"And what were they like with you, these thieves?"

"To hell with me, it was, but they didn't show it too much, only now
and again when they couldn't hold themselves in. They looked at me
out of the corner of their eyes, and took damn good care not to
touch me in passing, for I was still war-mucky.

"It disgusted me a bit to be in the middle of that heap of
good-for-nothings, but I said to myself, 'Come, it's only for a bit,
Firmin.' There was just one time that I very near broke out with the
itch, and that was when one of 'em said, 'Later, when we return, if
we do return.'--NO! He had no right to say that. Sayings like that,
before you let them out of your gob, you've got to earn them; it's
like a decoration. Let them get cushy jobs, if they like, but not
play at being men in the open when they've damned well run away. And
you hear 'em discussing the battles, for they're in closer touch
than you with the big bugs and with the way the war's managed; and
afterwards, when you return, if you do return, it's you that'll be
wrong in the middle of all that crowd of humbugs, with the poor
little truth that you've got.

"Ah, that evening, I tell you, all those heads in the reek of the
light, the foolery of those people enjoying life and profiting by