Between the close ranks men glide, a camp saucepan in one hand, a quarter-litre measure in the other. “Milk chocolate, all hot, all boiling, two sous the quarter litre.” Tempters! they take off the wooden lid. The steam rises hot, thick and fragrant in the sharp evening air. What a glorious smell! If you have only two sous in your pocket you must yield. It is the soup that has left a disagreeable taste in your mouth, it is hunger that torments you; it is the herring that has made you thirsty, or the freshness of the night that has dried your throat. In short, your two sous pass into the seller’s pocket, and, in the midst of the crowd that jostles along, you put your lips to the burning tin pot, where so many others have been before. Farther on, a jolly Englishman, who, on a rustic table that can be taken to pieces, has traced different figures--a king, a queen, the Jack, a diamond, etc., for dice--is shouting: “Come on, come on, my lads! Where you like and where you fancy! The more you put down, the more you pick up! Who says the Jack? Who says the lucky diamond? Who says the King?” He has rattled his dice in a wooden cup and turned them out. “Up she comes! No luck!” and, always smiling pays out or pockets his money according to the chances of the game. There is a crowd round his table. You might think you were at Monte Carlo. “You come here barefoot, you go away in a motor!” There are players of all nationalities. Here one meets Frenchmen from the North, Frenchmen from the South, Frenchmen from all our provinces. One sees Britons from all parts of the United Kingdom, Belgians--Flemish and Walloons; natives of Tunis, Morocco and Senegal, each one playing with the passion peculiar to his race. All try to forget in the excitement of play their cares and the sadness of their exile. “Up she comes!” The banker is getting rich and the poor fellows, stupefied, see their last sous vanishing. On some of them fortune smiles, and if they are sensible at once go away to exchange their gains for bread, chocolate or tobacco. Costers go round offering goods to all who pass--this one a cloak, another puttees, another knives cleverly made out of nails flattened between two stones, sharpened on a flint and finished with a bit of cord for a handle. Some go so far as to sell their rations of bread or the herring they have received, for they would sooner go without food than tobacco. An Englishman who is barefoot tries to sell his boots, a Moroccan his cloak, his belt and a shirt that he has filched in the afternoon while it was drying in the sun. Some shopmen have only a single plank, on which are exhibited the knick-knacks made in the camp: knives, scarf-pins, post cards, shoes, and forage-caps cut out of the military blankets that come from Maubeuge; mandolines made from a cigar-box and strings bought in town by a kind-hearted sentinel.