others who've got killed by an unlucky chance; among us there are
some that are still alive by a lucky chance. It isn't the same
thing, that, seeing that when you're dead, it's for a long time."

"Yes," says Tirette, "but you're getting too venomous with your
stories of shirkers. As long as we can't help it, it's time to turn
over. I'm thinking of a retired forest-ranger at Cherey, where we
were last month, who went about the streets of the town spying
everywhere to rout out some civilian of military age, and he smelled
out the dodgers like a mastiff. Behold him pulling up in front of a
sturdy goodwife that had a mustache, and he only sees her mustache,
so he bullyrags her--'Why aren't you at the front, you?'"

"For my part," says Pepin, "I don't fret myself about the
shirkers or the semi-shirkers, it's wasting one's time; but where
they get on my nerves, it's when they swank. I'm of Volpatte's
opinion. Let 'em shirk, good, that's human nature; but afterwards
they shouldn't say, 'I've been a soldier.' Take the engages,
[note 3] for instance--"

"That depends on the engages. Those who have offered for the
infantry without conditions, I look up to those men as much as to
those that have got killed; but the engages in the
departments or special arms, even in the heavy artillery, they begin
to get my back up. We know 'em! When they're doing the agreeable in
their social circle, they'll say, 'I've offered for the war.'--'Ah,
what a fine thing you have done; of your own free will you have
defied the machine-guns! '--'Well, yes, madame la marquise, I'm
built like that!' Eh, get out of it, humbug!"