With his finger on his cheek, he
leaned with his elbows on that fine carriage adorned with windows
that he was the valet de chambre of. He'd have made you sick, the
dainty beast. He was just exactly the poilu that you see pictures of
in the ladies' papers--the pretty little naughty papers."
Each has now his memories, his tirade on this much-excogitated
subject of the shirkers, and all begin to overflow and to talk at
once. A hubbub surrounds the foot of the mean wall where we are
heaped like bundles, with a gray, muddy, and trampled spectacle
lying before us, laid waste by rain.
"--orderly in waiting to the Road Department, then at the Bakery,
then cyclist to the Revictualing Department of the Eleventh
Battery."
"--every morning he had a note to take to the Service de
l'Intendance, to the Gunnery School, to the Bridges Department, and
in the evening to the A.D. and the A.T.--that was all."
"--when I was coming back from leave,' said that orderly, 'the
women cheered us at all the level-crossing gates that the train
passed.' 'They took you for soldiers,' I said."
"--'Ah,' I said, 'you're called up, then, are you?' 'Certainly,'
he says to me, 'considering that I've been a round of meetings in
America with a Ministerial deputation. P'raps it's not exactly being
called up, that? Anyway, mon ami,' he says, 'I don't pay any rent,
so I must be called up.' 'And me--'"
"To finish," cries Volpatte, silencing the hum with his authority of
a traveler returned from "down there," "to finish, I saw a whole
legion of 'em all together at a blow-out.
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