, he relapses upon rosy visions: "Old man, it's a
good wound, after all. I shall be sent back, no mistake about it."

His eyes wink and sparkle in the huge white clump that dithers on his
shoulders--a clump reddish on each side, where the ears were.

From the depth where the village lies we hear ten o'clock strike. "To
hell with the time," says Volpatte "it doesn't matter to me any more
what time it is."

He becomes loquacious. It is a low fever that inspires his
dissertation, and condenses it to the slow swing of our walk, in which
his step is already jaunty.

"They'll stick a red label on my greatcoat, you'll see, and take me to
the rear. I shall be bossed this time by a very polite sort of chap,
who'll say to me, 'That's one side, now turn the other way--so, my poor
fellow.' Then the ambulance, and then the sick-train, with the pretty
little ways of the Red Cross ladies all the way along, like they did to
Crapelet Jules, then the base hospital. Beds with white sheets, a stove
that snores in the middle of us all, people with the special job of
looking after you, and that you watch doing it, regulation
slippers--sloppy and comfortable--and a chamber-cupboard. Furniture!
And it's in those big hospitals that you're all right for grub! I shall
have good feeds, and baths. I shall take all I can get hold of. And
there'll be presents--that you can enjoy without having to fight the
others for them and get yourself into a bloody mess. I shall have my
two hands on the counterpane, and they'll do damn well nothing, like
things to look at--like toys, what? And under the sheets my legs'll be
white-hot all the way through, and my trotters'll be expanding like
bunches of violets."

Volpatte pauses, fumbles about, and pulls out of his pocket, along with
his famous pair of Soissons scissors, something that he shows to me:
"Tiens, have you seen this?"

It is a photograph of his wife and two children. He has already shown
it to me many a time. I look at it and express appreciation.

"I shall go on sick-leave," says Volpatte, "and while my ears are
sticking themselves on again, the wife and the little ones will look at
me, and I shall look at them. And while they're growing again like
lettuces, my friends, the war, it'll make progress--the Russians--one
doesn't know, what?" He is thinking aloud, lulling himself with happy
anticipations, already alone with his private festival in the midst of
us.

"Robber!" Feuillade shouts at h