Once more I see gathered and grouped, soiled by contact with the
earth and dirty smoke, the familiar faces and poses of those who
have not been separated since the beginning, chained and riveted
together in fraternity. But there is less dissimilarity than at the
beginning in the appearance of the cave-men.
Papa Blaire displays in his well-worn mouth a set of new teeth, so
resplendent that one can see nothing in all his poor face except
those gayly-dight jaws. The great event of these foreign teeth's
establishment, which he is taming by degrees and sometimes uses for
eating, has profoundly modified his character and his manners. He is
rarely besmeared with grime, he is hardly slovenly. Now that he has
become handsome he feels it necessary to become elegant. For the
moment he is dejected, because--a miracle--he cannot wash himself.
Deeply sunk in a corner, he half opens a lack-luster eye, bites and
masticates his old soldier's mustache--not long ago the only
ornament on his face--and from time to time spits out a hair.
Fouillade is shivering, cold-smitten, or yawns, depressed and
shabby. Marthereau has not changed at all. He is still as always
well-bearded, his eye round and blue, and his legs so short that his
trousers seem to be slipping continually from his waist and dropping
to his feet. Cocon is always Cocon by the dried and parchment-like
head wherein sums are working; but a recurrence of lice, the ravages
of which we see overflowing on to his neck and wrists, has isolated
him for a week now in protracted tussles which leave him surly when
he returns among us.
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