nd on them. Row them hot and good--start reprisals
straight away. The men will pretend not to understand, but
insist--don't take no for an answer; take whatever you want right and
left--in the end you will get properly settled in."

Fandor carried out these instructions. Before he had been ten minutes
in the room, men were rushing in all directions, fussing, jostling one
another, coming, going, demanding of all the echoes in that huge
white-washed barn of a barrack-room dormitory:

"Where is the palliasse of Corporal Vinson!"

"Find me the bolster of Corporal Vinson!"

XIII

JUVE'S STRATAGEM

Whilst Jerome Fandor was commencing his apprenticeship as a soldier at
the Saint Benoit barracks, Verdun, a sordid individual was following
an elegant pedestrian who, descending the rue Solferino, went in the
direction of the Seine. It was about seven in the evening.

"Pstt!"

This sound issued from the ragged individual, but the passer-by did
not turn his head.

"Monsieur!" insisted the sordid one.

As the elegant pedestrian did not seem to know he was being followed,
the sordid individual stepped to his side, and murmured in his white
beard distinctly enough to be heard:

"Lieutenant! Do listen!... Look here, Monsieur de Loubersac ...
Henri!"

The young man turned: he gave the importunate speaker a withering
stare: he was furious.

The speaker was Vagualame.

"I shall fine you five hundred francs! How dare you accost me like
this? Are you mad?" De Loubersac's voice shook with rage.

Lieutenant de Loubersac had just quitted the Second Bureau after an
unusually hard day's work. Fatigued by the over-heated offices, he was
enjoying the fresh air and exercise in spite of the chilling mist
overhanging Paris. When his thoughts were not connected on his work,
he would dwell tenderly on every little detail of his meetings with
pretty Mademoiselle de Naarboveck. Had she not given him permission to
call her Wilhelmine, and did he not cherish the hope of soon making
her his wife?

But this Vagualame was insupportable! That he should dare to accost
him without observing the customary precautions--hail him by his
style and title in a most public thoroughfare---should so imprudently
compromise himself and an attache of the Second Bureau! Well, he knew
how to attack informers and such gentry in their most vulnerable
spot--their purse; hence the fine of five hundred francs he had
imposed on Vagualame!

The old fel