Cocon has been wakened by Pinegal. The man of figures
therefore thinks aloud, and says: "The squad had seventeen men when
it set off for the war. It has seventeen also at present, with the
stop-gaps. Each man has already worn out four greatcoats, one of the
original blue, and three cigar-smoke blue, two pairs of trousers and
six pairs of boots. One must count two rifles to each man, but one
can't count the overalls. Our emergency rations have been renewed
twenty-three times. Among us seventeen, we've been mentioned
fourteen times in Army Orders, of which two were to the Brigade,
four to the Division, and one to the Army. Once we stayed sixteen
days in the trenches without relief. We've been quartered and lodged
in forty-seven different villages up to now. Since the beginning of
the campaign, twelve thousand men have passed through the regiment,
which consists of two thousand."
A strange lisping noise interrupts him. It comes from Blaire, whose
new ivories prevent him from talking as they also prevent him from
eating. But he puts them in every evening, and retains them all
night with fierce determination, for he was promised that in the end
he would grow accustomed to the object they have put into his head.
I raise myself on my elbow, as on a battlefield, and look once more
on the beings whom the scenes and happenings of the times have
rolled up all together. I look at them all, plunged in the abyss of
passive oblivion, some of them seeming still to be absorbed in their
pitiful anxieties, their childish instincts, and their slave-like
ignorance.
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