he first.

"A carbuncle."

"Ah! and you?"

"Dysentery."

"Ah! and you?"

"A bubo."

"But in that case you have not been wounded during the war?"

"Not the least in the world."

"Very well! You can take up your knapsacks again. The archbishop gives
up the beds of his seminarists only to the wounded."

I pack into my knapsack again all the knick-knacks that I had taken out,
and we are off again, willy-nilly, for the city hospital. There was no
more room there. In vain the sisters contrive to squeeze the iron beds
together, the wards are full. Worn out by all these delays, I seize one
mattress, Francis takes another, and we go and stretch ourselves in the
garden on a great glass-plot.

The next day I have a talk with the director, an affable and charming
man. I ask permission for the painter and for me to go out into the
town. He consents; the door opens; we are free! We are going to dine at
last! To eat real meat, to drink real wine! Ah, we do not hesitate; we
make straight for the best hotel in town. They serve us there with
a wholesome meal. There are flowers there on the table, magnificent
bouquets of roses and fuchias that spread themselves out of the glass
vases. The waiter brings in a roast that drains into a lake of butter;
the sun himself comes to the feast, makes the covers sparkle and the
blades of the knives, sifts his golden dust through the carafes, and
playing with the pomard that gently rocks in the glasses, spots with a
ruby star the damask cloth.

Oh, sacred joy of the guzzlers! My mouth is full and Francis is drunk!
The fumes of the roast mingle with the perfume of the flowers; the
purple of the wine vies in gorgeousness with the red of the roses.
The waiter who serves us has the air of folly and we have the air of
gluttons, it is all the same to us! We stuff down roast after roast, we
pour down bordeaux upon burgundy, chartreuse upon cognac. To the devil
with your weak wines and your thirty-sixes, {7} which we have been
drinking since our departure from Paris! To the devil with those
whimsicalities without name, those mysterious pot-house poisons with
which we have been so crammed to leanness for nearly a month! We are
unrecognizable; our once peaked faces redden like a drunkard's, we get
noisy, with noise in the air we cut loose. We run all over the town that
way.

7 Brandy of thirty-six degrees.

Evening arrives; we must go back, however. The sister who is in charge
of the old