ell you about what
happened to me at that last village on the Verdun road?"

"No."

"I was lyin' down for a nap under a plum-tree, a wonderfully nice place
near a li'l brook an' all, an' suddenly that crazy Jane ... You know the
one that used to throw stones at us out of that broken-down house at the
corner of the road.... Anyway, she comes up to me with a funny look in
her eyes an' starts makin' love to me. I had a regular wrastlin' match
gettin' away from her."

"Funny position for you to be in, getting away from a woman."

"But doesn't that strike you funny? Why down where I come from a drunken
mulatto woman wouldn't act like that. They all keep up a fake of not
wantin' your attentions." His black eyes sparkled, and he laughed his
deep ringing laugh, that made the withered woman smile as she set an
omelette before them.

"Voila, messieurs," she said with a grand air, as if it were a boar's
head that she was serving.

Three French infantrymen came into the cafe, shaking the rain off their
shoulders.

"Nothing to drink but champagne at four francs fifty," shouted Howe.
"Dirty night out, isn't it?"

"We'll drink that, then!"

Howe and Randolph moved up and they all sat at the same table.

"Fortune of war?"

"Oh, the war, what do you think of the war?" cried Martin.

"What do you think of the peste? You think about saving your skin."

"What's amusing about us is that we three have all saved our skins
together," said one of the Frenchmen.

"Yes. We are of the same class," said another, holding up his thumb.
"Mobilised same day." He held up his first finger. "Same company." He
held up a second finger. "Wounded by the same shell.... Evacuated to the
same hospital. Convalescence at same time.... Reforme to the same depot
behind the lines."

"Didn't all marry the same girl, did you, to make it complete?" asked
Randolph.

They all shouted with laughter until the glasses along the bar rang.

"You must be Athos, Porthos, and d'Artagnan."

"We are," they shouted.

"Some more champagne, madame, for the three musketeers," sang Randolph
in a sort of operatic yodle.

"All I have left is this," said the withered woman, setting a bottle
down on the table.

"Is that poison?"

"It's cognac, it's very good cognac," said the old woman seriously.

"C'est du cognac! Vive le roi cognac!" everybody shouted.

"_Au plein de mon cognac
Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Au plein de mon cognac