He
has a white billy-goat beard, and might be an artiste. Another
follows him, wearing a black overcoat, a black bowler hat, a black
beard, a white tie and an eyeglass.
"Ah, ah! There are some poilus," says the first gentleman. "These
are real poilus, indeed."
He comes up to our party a little timidly, as though in the
Zoological Gardens, and offers his hand to the one who is nearest to
him--not without awkwardness, as one offers a piece of bread to the
elephant.
"He, he! They are drinking coffee," he remarks.
"They call it 'the juice,'" corrects the magpie-man.
"Is it good, my friends?" The soldier, abashed in his turn by this
alien and unusual visitation, grunts, giggles, and reddens, and the
gentleman says, "He, he!" Then, with a slight motion of the head,
he withdraws backwards.
The assemblage, with its neutral shades of civilian cloth and its
sprinkling of bright military hues--like geraniums and hortensias in
the dark soil of a flowerbed--oscillates, then passes, and moves off
the opposite way it came. One of the officers was heard to say, "We
have yet much to see, messieurs les journalistes."
When the radiant spectacle has faded away, we look at each other.
Those who had fled into the funk-holes now gradually and head first
disinter themselves. The group recovers itself and shrugs its
shoulders.
"They're journalists," says Tirette.
"Journalists?"
"Why, yes, the individuals that lay the newspapers.
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