s staff officers,
he threatened us with his finger, whistling between his separated teeth.
"You shall pay dear for this, gentlemen from Paris!"

Two days after this episode, the icy water of the camp made me so
sick that there was urgent need of my entering the hospital. After the
doctor's visit, I buckle on my knapsack, and under guard of a corporal,
here I am going limping along, dragging my legs and sweating under my
harness. The hospital is gorged with men; they send me back. I then
go to one of the nearest military hospitals; a bed stands empty; I am
admitted. I put down my knapsack at last, and with the expectation that
the major would forbid me to move, I went out for a walk in the little
garden which connected the set of buildings. Suddenly there issued from
the door a man with bristling beard and bulging eyes. He plants his
hands in the pockets of a long dirt-brown cloak, and shouts out from the
distance as soon as he sees me:

"Hey you, man! What are you doing over here?" I approach, I explain to
him the motive that brings me. He thrashes his arms about and bawls:

"Go in again! You have no right to walk about in this garden until they
give you your costume."

I go back into the room, a nurse arrives and brings me a great military
coat, pantaloons, old shoes without heels, and a cap like a nightcap. I
look at myself, thus grotesquely dressed, in my little mirror. Good
Heavens, what a face and what an outfit! With my haggard eyes and my
sallow complexion, with my hair cut short, and my nose with the bumps
shining; with my long mouse-gray coat, my pants stained russet, my great
hedless shoes, my colossal cotton cap, I am prodigiously ugly. I could
not keep from laughing. I turn my head toward the side of my bed
neighbor, a tall boy of Jewish type, who is sketching my portrait in a
notebook. We become friends at once; I tell him to call me Eugene
Lejantel; he responds by telling me to call him Francis Emonot; we
recall to each other this and that painter; we enter into a discussion
of esthetics and forget our misfortune. Night arrives; they portion out
to us a dish of boiled meat dotted black with a few lentils, they pour
us out brimming cups of coco-clairet, and I undress, enchanted at
stretching myself out in a bed without keeping my clothes and my shoes
on.

The next morning I am awakened at about six o'clock by a great fracas at
the door and a clatter of voices. I sit up in bed, I rub my eyes, and
I s