everything rotten on
this earth. All the lot of us looked foul when he went by or when we
saw him in the officers' room spread out on a chair that you
couldn't see underneath him, with his vast belly and huge cap. and
circled round with stripes from top to bottom, like a barrel--he was
hard on the private! They called him Loeb--a Boche, you see!"
"I knew him!" cried Paradis; "when war started he was declared unfit
for active service, naturally. While I was doing my term he was a
dodger already--but he dodged round all the street corners to pinch
you--you got a day's clink for an unbuttoned button, and he gave it
you over and above if there was some bit of a thing about you that
wasn't quite O.K.--and everybody laughed. He thought they were
laughing at you, and you knew they were laughing at him, but you
knew it in vain, you were in it up to your head for the clink."
"He had a wife," Tirette goes on, "the old--"
"I remember her, too," Paradis exclaimed. "You talk about a bitch!"
"Some of 'em drag a little pug-dog about with 'em, but him, he
trailed that yellow minx about everywhere, with her broom-handle
hips and her wicked look. It was her that worked the old sod up
against us. He was more stupid than wicked, but as soon as she was
there he got more wicked than stupid. So you bet they were some
nuisance--"
Just then, Marthereau wakes up from his sleep by the entry with a
half-groan. He straightens himself up, sitting on his straw like a
gaol-bird, and we see his bearded silhouette take the vague outline
of a Chinese, while his round eye rolls and turns in the shadows.
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