His face, bloodless as a slum child's, is
underlined by a red goatee that punctuates his hair like an
apostrophe: "Yes, it's true, when you come to think of it. What's a
soldier, or even several soldiers?--Nothing, and less than nothing,
in the whole crowd; and so we see ourselves lost, drowned, like the
few drops of blood that we are among all this flood of men and
things."
Barque sighs and is silent, and the end of his discourse gives a
chance of hearing to a bit of jingling narrative, told in an
undertone: "He was coming along with two horses--Fs-s-s--a shell;
and he's only one horse left."
"You get fed up with it," says Volpatte.
"But you stick it," growls Barque.
"You've got to," says Paradis.
"Why?" asks Marthereau, without conviction.
"No need for a reason, as long as we've got to."
"There is no reason," Lamuse avers.
"Yes, there is," says Cocon. "It's--or rather, there are several."
"Shut it up! Much better to have no reason, as long as we've got to
stick it."
"All the same," comes the hollow voice of Blaire, who lets no chance
slip of airing his pet phrase--"All the same, they'd like to steal
the very skin off us!"
"At the beginning of it," says Tirette, "I used to think about a
heap of things. I considered and calculated. Now, I don't think any
more."
"Nor me either."
"Nor me."
"I've never tried to."
"You're not such a fool as you look, flea-face," says the shrill and
jeering voice of Mesnil Andre.
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