"Tiens! not far from the front, don't know where
exactly, where there's an ambulance clearing-station and a
sous-intendance--I met the reptile there."
The wind, as it passed over us, tossed him the question, "What was
it?"
At that moment there was a lull, and the weather allowed Volpatte to
talk after a fashion. He said: "He took me round all the jumble of
the depot as if it was. a fair, although he was one of the sights of
the place. He led me along the passages and into the dining-rooms of
houses and supplementary barracks. He half opened doors with labels
on them, and said, 'Look here, and here too--look!' I went
inspecting with him, but he didn't go back, like I did, to the
trenches, don't fret yourself, and he wasn't coming back from them
either. don't worry! The reptile, the first time I saw him he was
walking nice and leisurely in the yard--'I'm in the Expenses
Department,' he says. We talked a bit, and the next day he got an
orderly job so as to dodge getting sent away, seeing it was his turn
to go since the beginning of the war.
"On the step of the door where he'd laid all night on a feather bed,
he was polishing the pumps of his monkey master--beautiful yellow
pumps--rubbing 'em with paste, fairly glazing 'em, my boy. I stopped
to watch him, and the chap told me all about himself. Mon vieux, I
don't remember much more of the stuffing that came out of his crafty
skull than I remember of the History of France and the dates we
whined at school.
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