s own gayety, its sky was as serene as on a holiday.

Gaude suddenly took his bugle and gave the call that announced the
distribution of rations, whereat Loubet appeared astonished. What was
it? What did it mean? Were they going to give out chickens, as he had
promised Lapoulle the night before? He had been born in the Halles,
in the Rue de la Cossonerie, was the unacknowledged son of a small
huckster, had enlisted "for the money there was in it," as he said,
after having been a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, and was now the
gourmand, the epicure of the company, continually nosing after something
good to eat. But he went off to see what was going on, while Chouteau,
the company artist, house-painter by trade at Belleville, something of a
dandy and a revolutionary republican, exasperated against the government
for having called him back to the colors after he had served his time,
was cruelly chaffing Pache, whom he had discovered on his knees, behind
the tent, preparing to say his prayers. There was a pious man for you!
Couldn't he oblige him, Chouteau, by interceding with God to give him
a hundred thousand francs or some such small trifle? But Pache, an
insignificant little fellow with a head running up to a point, who had
come to them from some hamlet in the wilds of Picardy, received the
other's raillery with the uncomplaining gentleness of a martyr. He was
the butt of the squad, he and Lapoulle, the colossal brute who had
got his growth in the marshes of the Sologne, so utterly ignorant of
everything that on the day of his joining the regiment he had asked his
comrades to show him the King. And although the terrible tidings of the
disaster at Froeschwiller had been known throughout the camp since early
morning, the four men laughed, joked, and went about their usual tasks
with the indifference of so many machines.

But there arose a murmur of pleased surprise. It was occasioned by Jean,
the corporal, coming back from the commissary's, accompanied by Maurice,
with a load of firewood. So, they were giving out wood at last, the lack
of which the night before had deprived the men of their soup! Twelve
hours behind time, only!

"Hurrah for the commissary!" shouted Chouteau.

"Never mind, so long as it is here," said Loubet. "Ah! won't I make you
a bully _pot-au-feu_!"

He was usually quite willing to take charge of the mess arrangements,
and no one was inclined to say him nay, for he cooked like an angel. On
those occas