We gather again, standing, around the props that hold the barn up,
and around the rills that fall vertically from the holes in the
roof--faint columns which rest on vague bases of splashing water.
"Here we are again!" we cry.
Two lumps in turn block the doorway, soaked with the rain that
drains from them--Lamuse and Barque. who have been in quest of a
brasier, and now return from the expedition empty-handed, sullen and
vicious. "Not a shadow of a fire-bucket, and what's more, no wood or
coal either, not for a fortune." It is impossible to have any fire.
"If I can't get any, no one can," says Barque, with a pride which a
hundred exploits justify.
We stay motionless, or move slowly in the little space we have,
aghast at so much misery. "Whose is the paper?"
"It's mine," says Becuwe.
"What does it say? Ah, zut, one can't read in this darkness!"
"It says they've done everything necessary now for the soldiers, to
keep them warm in the trenches. They've got all they want, and
blankets and shirts and brasiers and fire-buckets and bucketsful of
coal; and that it's like that in the first-line trenches."
"Ah, damnation!" growl some of the poor prisoners of the barn, and
they shake their fists at the emptiness without and at the newspaper
itself.
But Fouillade has lost interest in what they say. He has bent his
long Don Quixote carcase down in the shadow, and outstretched the
lean neck that looks as if it were braided with violin strings.
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