All the pals kept their jaws shut but me; I spoke up,
'Mon adjudant,' I says, 'it's possible, but--'" A sentence follows
that I cannot secure--"Oh, tu sais, just like that, I said it. He
didn't get shirty; 'Good, that's good,' he says as he hops it, and
afterwards he was as good as all that, with me."
"Just like me, with Dodore, 'jutant of the 13th, when I was on
leave--a mongrel. Now he's at the Pantheon, as caretaker.
He'd got it in for me, so--"
So each unpacks his own little load of historical anecdote. They are
all alike, and not one of them but says, "As for me, I am not like
the others."
* * * * * *
The post-orderly! He is a tall and broad man with fat calves;
comfortable looking, and as neat and tidy as a policeman. He is in a
bad temper. There are new orders, and now he has to go every day as
far as Battalion Headquarters. He abuses the order as if it had been
directed exclusively against himself; and he continues to complain
even while he calls up the corporals for the post and maintains his
customary chat en passant with this man and that. And in spite of
his spleen he does not keep to himself all the information with
which he comes provided. While removing the string from the
letter-packets he dispenses his verbal news, and announces first,
that according to rumor, there is a very explicit ban on the wearing
of hoods.
"Hear that?" says Tirette to Tirloir. "Got to chuck your fine hood
away!"
"Not likely! I'm not on.
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