He places himself at the corner of a table already overcrowded by
four drinkers who are united in a game of cards. He fills the glass
to the brim and empties it, then fills it again.
"Hey, good health to you! Don't drink the tumbler!" yelps in his
face a man who arrives in the dirty blue jumper of fatigues, and
displays a heavy cross-bar of eyebrows across his pale face, a
conical head, and half a pound's weight of ears. It is Harlingue,
the armorer.
It is not very glorious to be seated alone before a pint in the
presence of a comrade who gives signs of thirst. But Fouillade
pretends not to understand the requirements of the gentleman who
dallies in front of him with an engaging smile, and he hurriedly
empties his glass. The other turns his back, not without grumbling
that "they're not very generous, but on the contrary greedy, these
Southerners."
Fouillade has put his chin on his fists, and looks unseeing at a
corner of the room where the crowded poilus elbow, squeeze, and
jostle each other to get by.
It was pretty good, that swig of white wine, but of what use are
those few drops in the Sahara of Fouillade? The blues did not far
recede, and now they return.
The Southerner rises and goes out, with his two glasses of wine in
his stomach and one sou in his pocket. He plucks up courage to visit
one more tavern, to plumb it with his eyes, and by way of excuse to
mutter, as he leaves the place, "Curse him! He's never there, the
animal!"
Then he returns to the barn, which still--as always--whistles with
wind and water.
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