u. The
comrade, here, belongs in the 1st corps; he was at Wissembourg, another
beastly hole."

They told their story, how they had been swept away in the general
panic, had crawled into a ditch half-dead with fatigue and hunger, each
of them slightly wounded, and since then had been dragging themselves
along in the rear of the army, compelled to lie over in towns when the
fever-fits came on, until at last they had reached the camp and were on
the lookout to find their regiments.

Maurice, who had a piece of Gruyere before him, noticed the hungry eyes
fixed on his plate.

"Hi there, mademoiselle! bring some more cheese, will you--and bread and
wine. You will join me, won't you, comrades? It is my treat. Here's to
your good health!"

They drew their chairs up to the table, only too delighted with the
invitation. Their entertainer watched them as they attacked the food,
and a thrill of pity ran through him as he beheld their sorry plight,
dirty, ragged, arms gone, their sole attire a pair of red trousers and
the capote, kept in place by bits of twine and so patched and pieced
with shreds of vari-colored cloth that one would have taken them for men
who had been looting some battle-field and were wearing the spoil they
had gathered there.

"Ah! _foutre_, yes!" continued the taller of the two as he plied his
jaws, "it was no laughing matter there! You ought to have seen it,--tell
him how it was, Coutard."

And the little man told his story with many gestures, describing figures
on the air with his bread.

"I was washing my shirt, you see, while the rest of them were making
soup. Just try and picture to yourself a miserable hole, a regular trap,
all surrounded by dense woods that gave those Prussian pigs a chance to
crawl up to us before we ever suspected they were there. So, then, about
seven o'clock the shells begin to come tumbling about our ears. _Nom de
Dieu!_ but it was lively work! we jumped for our shooting-irons, and
up to eleven o'clock it looked as if we were going to polish 'em off in
fine style. But you must know that there were only five thousand of us,
and the beggars kept coming, coming as if there was no end to them.
I was posted on a little hill, behind a bush, and I could see them
debouching in front, to right, to left, like rows of black ants swarming
from their hill, and when you thought there were none left there were
always plenty more. There's no use mincing matters, we all thought that
our le