e pages slowly.
His finger stopped at a name.

"Orderly!"

A man presented himself.

"Conduct Corporal Vinson to A block, second floor."

Turning to Fandor, the sergeant informed him:

"You are attached to the third of the second."

While plodding through the mud of the courtyard, Fandor said to
himself:

"The third of the second means, I suppose, that I have the honour of
belonging to the third company of the second battalion."

Fandor gazed with lively curiosity at the immense building in which he
was to pass his days and nights for he did not know how long a time.
As he scrutinised this enormous pile, standing harsh and stark in its
uncompromising and ordered strength, as he took stock of the vast
courtyards and the stony lengths of imprisoning walls, he got an idea
of that formidable organisation called a regiment, which itself is but
an infinitesimal part of that great whole we call an army.
Appreciating as he now did the importance, the immutability, the
regularity of the movements of the military machine, with its wheels
within wheels, Fandor asked himself if it were possible to carry
through the programme he had drawn up for himself. Could he, at one
and the same time, trick the French Army and save it?... He had taken
his precautions: he had read and reread Vinson's manual, now _his_
manual. Mentally he had put himself in the skin of a corporal: he was
letter perfect, and now he must cover himself with the mantle of
Vinson--for the greater glory of France!

He could not help laughing when he read the list of his facial
characteristics: chin, round; nose, medium; face, oval; eyes, grey.
Vague enough this to be safe! Fandor's hair was dark chestnut:
Vinson's was brown. Vinson and Fandor were sufficiently alike as to
height and figure: besides, soldiers' uniforms were not an exact fit.

"Here you are, Corporal!" announced the orderly. He pointed to a vast
room at the end of a corridor. The bugle had just sounded the reveille
and the barrack-room was humming like a hive of awakened bees. The
orderly had vanished. Fandor stood at the threshold, hesitating: his
self-confidence had gone down with a run. It was a momentary lapse.
Pulling himself together he walked into the room.

When giving him his instructions, Vinson had warned Fandor, that when
it came to settling down in barracks he would find nothing to hand.

"Among other little items, your bed will be missing. As corporal you
have a right to rou