e Southerners."

Fouillade has put his chin on his fists, and looks unseeing at a corner
of the room where the crowded poilus elbow, squeeze, and jostle each
other to get by.

It was pretty good, that swig of white wine, but of what use are those
few drops in the Sahara of Fouillade? The blues did not far recede, and
now they return.

The Southerner rises and goes out, with his two glasses of wine in his
stomach and one sou in his pocket. He plucks up courage to visit one
more tavern, to plumb it with his eyes, and by way of excuse to mutter,
as he leaves the place, "Curse him! He's never there, the animal!"

Then he returns to the barn, which still--as always--whistles with wind
and water. Fouillade lights his candle, and by the glimmer of the flame
that struggles desperately to take wing and fly away, he sees Labri. He
stoops low, with his light over the miserable dog--perhaps it will die
first. Labri is sleeping, but feebly, for he opens an eye at once, and
his tail moves.

The Southerner strokes him, and says to him in a low voice, "It can't
be helped, it--" He will not say more to sadden him, but the dog
signifies appreciation by jerking his head before closing his eyes
again. Fouillade rises stiffly, by reason of his rusty joints, and
makes for his couch. For only one thing more he is now hoping--to
sleep, that the dismal day may die, that wasted day, like so many
others that there will be to endure stoically and to overcome, before
the last day arrives of the war or of his life.

------------

[note 1:] French soldiers have extensively developed a system of
corresponding with French women whom they do not know from Eve and
whose acquaintance they usually make through newspaper advertisements.
As typical of the latter I copy the following: "Officier artilleur, 30
ans, desire correspondance discrete avec jeune marraine, femme du
monde. Ecrire," etc. The "lonely soldier" movement in this country is
similar.--Tr.

XII

The Doorway

"IT's foggy. Would you like to go?"

It is Poterloo who asks, as he turns towards me and shows eyes so blue
that they make his fine, fair head seem transparent.

Poterloo comes from Souchez, and now that the Chasseurs have at last
retaken it, he wants to see again the village where he lived happily in
the days when he was only a man.

It is a pilgrimage of peril; not that we should have far to go--Souchez
is just there. For six months we have lived and worked in t