ge and sorrow? As well go and
have a shot at the enemy, if they come where they are not wanted. And he
remembered his old battle cry: Ah! _bon sang_! if he had no longer heart
for honest toil, he would go and defend her, his country, the old land
of France!

When Jean was on his legs he cast a look about the camp, where the
summons of the drums and bugles, taken up by one command after another,
produced a momentary bustle, the conclusion of the business of the day.
Some men were running to take their places in the ranks, while others,
already half asleep, arose and stretched their stiff limbs with an air
of exasperated weariness. He stood waiting patiently for roll-call, with
that cheerful imperturbability and determination to make the best of
everything that made him the good soldier that he was. His comrades were
accustomed to say of him that if he had only had education he would have
made his mark. He could just barely read and write, and his aspirations
did not rise even so high as to a sergeantcy. Once a peasant, always a
peasant.

But he found something to interest him in the fire of green wood that
was still smoldering and sending up dense volumes of smoke, and he
stepped up to speak to the two men who were busying themselves over it,
Loubet and Lapoulle, both members of his squad.

"Quit that! You are stifling the whole camp."

Loubet, a lean, active fellow and something of a wag, replied:

"It will burn, corporal; I assure you it will--why don't you blow, you!"

And by way of encouragement he bestowed a kick on Lapoulle, a colossus
of a man, who was on his knees puffing away with might and main, his
cheeks distended till they were like wine-skins, his face red and
swollen, and his eyes starting from their orbits and streaming with
tears. Two other men of the squad, Chouteau and Pache, the former
stretched at length upon his back like a man who appreciates the delight
of idleness, and the latter engrossed in the occupation of putting
a patch on his trousers, laughed long and loud at the ridiculous
expression on the face of their comrade, the brutish Lapoulle.

Jean did not interfere to check their merriment. Perhaps the time was at
hand when they would not have much occasion for laughter, and he, with
all his seriousness and his humdrum, literal way of taking things, did
not consider that it was part of his duty to be melancholy, preferring
rather to close his eyes or look the other way when his men were