Although darkness falls on my eyes and chokes them as I come in from
the pallid evening, I still dodge the snares spread over the ground
by water-bottles, mess-tins and weapons, but I butt full into the
loaves that are packed together exactly in the middle, like the
paving of a yard. I reach my corner. Something alive is there with a
huge back, fleecy and rounded, squatting and stooping over a
collection of little things that glitter on the ground, and I tap
the shoulder upholstered in sheepskin. The being turns round, and by
the dull and fitful gleam of a candle which a bayonet stuck in the
ground upholds, I see one half of a face, an eye, the end of a
mustache, and the corner of a half-open mouth. It growls in a
friendly way, and resumes the inspection of its possessions.
"What are you doing there?"
"I'm fixing things, and clearing up."
The quasi-brigand who appears to be checking his booty, is my
comrade Volpatte. He has folded his tent-cloth in four and placed it
on his bed--that is, on the truss of straw assigned to him--and on
this carpet he has emptied and displayed the contents of his
pockets.
And it is quite a shop that he broods over with a housewife's
solicitous eyes, watchful and jealous, lest some one walks over him.
With my eye I tick off his copious exhibition.
Alongside his handkerchief, pipe, tobacco-pouch (which also contains
a note-book), knife, purse, and pocket pipe-lighter, which comprise
the necessary and indispensable groundwork, here are two leather
laces twisted like earthworms round a watch enclosed in a case of
transparent celluloid, which has curiously dulled and blanched with
age.
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