familiar head among the uniformed men who in clumps or couples drink
and talk or in solitude write. He has the air of a cadger, and no
one pays him heed.

Finding no soul to come to his relief, he decides to invest at least
what he has in his pocket. He slips up to the counter. "A pint of
wine--and good."

"White?"

"Eh, oui."

"You, mon garcon, you're from the South," says the landlady,
handing him a little full bottle and a glass, and gathering his
twelve sous.

He places himself at the corner of a table already overcrowded by
four drinkers who are united in a game of cards. He fills the glass
to the brim and empties it, then fills it again.

"Hey, good health to you! Don't drink the tumbler!" yelps in his
face a man who arrives in the dirty blue jumper of fatigues, and
displays a heavy cross-bar of eyebrows across his pale face, a
conical head, and half a pound's weight of ears. It is Harlingue,
the armorer.

It is not very glorious to be seated alone before a pint in the
presence of a comrade who gives signs of thirst. But Fouillade
pretends not to understand the requirements of the gentleman who
dallies in front of him with an engaging smile, and he hurriedly