"There's a reported order as well," says the man of letters, "that
beards have got to be trimmed and hair got to be clipped close."

"Talk on, my lad," says Barque, on whose head the threatened order
directly falls; "you didn't see me! You can draw the curtains!"

"I'm telling you. Do it or don't do it--doesn't matter a damn to me."

Besides what is real and written, there is bigger news, but still more
dubious and imaginative--the division is going to be relieved, and sent
either to rest--real rest, for six weeks--or to Morocco, or perhaps to
Egypt.

Divers exclamations. They listen, and let themselves be tempted by the
fascination of the new, the wonderful.

But some one questions the post-orderly: "Who told you that?"

"The adjutant commanding the Territorial detachment that fatigues for
the H.Q. of the A.C."

"For the what?"

"For Headquarters of the Army Corps, and he's not the only one that
says it. There's--you know him--I've forgotten his name--he's like
Galle, but he isn't Galle--there's some one in his family who is Some
One. Anyway, he knows all about it."

"Then what?" With hungry eyes they form a circle around the
story-teller.

"Egypt, you say, we shall go to? Don't know it. I know there were
Pharaohs there at the time when I was a kid and went to school, but
since--"

"To Egypt!" The idea finds unconscious anchorage in their minds.

"Ah, non," says Blaire, "for I get sea-sick. Still, it doesn't last,
sea-sickness. Oui, but what would my good lady say?"

"What about it? She'll get used to it. You see niggers, and streets
full of big birds, like we see sparrows here."

"But haven't we to go to Alsace?"

"Yes," says the post-orderly, "there are some who think so at the
Pay-office."

"That'd do me well enough."

But common sense and acquired experience regain the upper hand and put
the visions to flight. We have been told so often that we were going a
long way off, so often have we believed it, so often been undeceived!
So, as if at a moment arranged, we wake up.

"It's all my eye--they've done it on us too often. Wait before
believing--and don't count a crumb's worth on it."

We reoccupy our corner. Here and there a man bears in his hand the
light momentous burden of a letter.

"Ah," says Tirloir, "I must be writing. Can't go eight days without
writing."

"Me too," says Eudore, "I must write to my p'tit' femme."

"Is she all right, Mariette?"

"Oui, oui, don't fret about Mariet