Paradis retains unimpaired the same quantum of
good color and good temper; he is unchanging, perennial. We smile
when he appears in the distance, placarded on the background of
sandbags like a new poster. Nothing has changed in Pepin
either, whom we can just see taking a stroll--we can tell him behind
by his red-and-white squares of an oilcloth draught-board, and in
front by his blade-like face and the gleam of a knife in his cold
gray look. Nor has Volpatte changed, with his leggings, his
shouldered blanket, and his face of a Mongolian tatooed with dirt;
nor Tirette, although he has been worried for some time by blood-red
streaks in his eyes--for some unknown and mysterious reason.
Farfadet keeps himself aloof, in pensive expectation. When the post
is being given out he awakes from his reverie to go so far, and then
retires into himself. His clerkly hands indite numerous and careful
postcards. He does not know of Eudoxie's end. Lamuse said no more to
any one of the ultimate and awful embrace in which he clasped her
body. He regretted--I knew it--his whispered confidence to me that
evening, and up to his death he kept the horrible affair sacred to
himself, with tenacious bashfulness. So we see Farfadet continuing
to live his airy existence with the living likeness of that fair
hair, which he only leaves for the scarce monosyllables of his
contact with us. Corporal Bertrand has still the same soldierly and
serious mien among us; he is always ready with his tranquil smile to
answer all questions with lucid explanations, to help each of us to
do his duty.
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