, from matches to toothpicks.
Meanwhile the bell rings and the train starts. Not one of us disturbs
himself, and while sitting on the walk, I explain to the painter how
the tubes work, the mechanism of the bell. The train backs down over the
rails to take us aboard. We ascend into our compartments again and we
pass in review the booty we had seized. To tell the truth, there
was little variety of food. Pork-butcher's meat and nothing but
pork-butcher's meat! We had six strings of Bologna sausages flavored
with garlic, a scarlet tongue, two sausages, a superb slice of Italian
sausage, a slice in silver stripe, the meat all of an angry red, mottled
white; four liters of wine, a half-bottle of cognac, and a few candle
ends. We stick the candle ends into the neck of our flasks, which swing,
hung by strings to the sides of the wagon. There was, thus, when the
train jolted over a switch, a rain of hot grease which congealed almost
instantly into great platters, but our coats had seen many another.

We began our repast at once, interrupted by the going and coming of
those of the militia who kept running along the footboards the whole
length of the train, and knocked at our window-panes and demanded
something to drink. We sang at the top of our voices, we drank, we
clinked glasses. Never did sick men make so much noise or romp so on a
train in motion!

One would have said that it was a rolling Court of Miracles; the
cripples jumped with jointed legs, those whose intestines were burning
soaked them in bumpers of cognac, the one-eyed opened their eyes, the
fevered capered about, the sick throats bellowed and tippled; it was
unheard of!

This disturbance ends in calming itself. I profit by the lull to put my
nose out of the window. There was not a star there, not even a tip of
the moon; heaven and earth seem to make but one, and in that intensity
of inky blackness, the lanterns winked like eyes of different colors
attached to the metal of the disks. The engineer discharged his whistle,
the engine puffed and vomited its sparks without rest. I reclose the
window and look at my companions. Some were snoring, others disturbed by
the jolting of the box, gurgled and swore in their sleep, turning over
incessantly, searching for room to stretch their legs, to brace their
heads that nodded at every jolt.

By dint of looking at them, I was beginning to get sleepy when the
train stopped short and woke me up. We were at a station; and the