But still they go away towards the north.
"The revally of the damned," says Marthereau.
We make way for them with a sort of admiration and a sort of terror.
When they have passed, Marthereau wags his head and murmurs, "There
are some getting ready, too, on the other side, with their gray
uniforms. Do you think those chaps are feeling it about the attack?
Then why have they come? It's not their doing, I know, but it's
theirs all the same, seeing they're here.--I know, I know, but it's
odd, all of it."
The sight of a passer-by alters the course of his ideas: "Tiens,
there's Truc, the big one, d'you know him? Isn't he immense and
pointed, that chap! As for me, I know I'm not quite hardly big
enough; but him, he goes too far. He always knows what's going on,
that two-yarder! For savvying everything, there's nobody going to
give him the go-by! I'll go and chivvy him about a funk-hole."
"If there's a rabbit-hole anywhere?" replies the elongated
passer-by, leaning on Marthereau like a poplar tree, "for sure, my
old Caparthe, certainly. Tiens, there"--and unbending his elbow he
makes an indicative gesture like a flag-signaler--"'Villa von
Hindenburg.' and there, 'Villa Glucks auf.' If that doesn't
satisfy you, you gentlemen are hard to please. P'raps there's a few
lodgers in the basement, but not noisy lodgers, and you can talk out
aloud in front of them, you know!"
"Ah, nom de Dieu!" cried Marthereau a quarter of an hour after we
had established ourselves in one of these square-cut graves,
"there's lodgers he didn't tell us about, that frightful great
lightning-rod, that infinity!" His eyelids were just closing, but
they opened again and he scratched his arms and thighs: "I want a
snooze! It appears it's out of the question.
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