“Ah! at last!” cried M. Perrier-Langlade. “Here you are, Monsieur Mourgue. Will you be good enough to tell me how many men you have at present in your huts?” M. Mourgue appeared to sink into himself before replying, in a preoccupied tone: “Twenty-eight, sir.” M. Perrier-Langlade this time laughed a bitter, discouraged laugh. “Well, well! it is not thirteen, nor five, but twenty-eight! Twenty-eight! And I was suspecting----” “But, sir----” we cried all together excitedly. From beneath the cloak of fur he thrust out his hand, which, in spite of its velvet glove, was none the less a mailed fist. “Be silent, gentlemen! You do not understand. Twenty-eight!” We looked at each other as if we had suddenly gone mad. M. Perrier-Langlade, carried away by sublime meditation, walked to and fro repeating, “Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!” I noticed his voice had almost a provincial inflection, and was not without geniality. For a few moments he repeated, first shaking his head, then with increasing joy, “Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!” And I was convinced that to him figures did not mean the same thing as they do to you or me. Then he abruptly saluted, with a supreme, imperious courtesy. “Good-bye, gentlemen! Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!” And he went off to his car, rubbing his hands together, with the savage joy of a man who has got hold of some absolute truth. DISCIPLINE Frankly, I do not regret those four days’ imprisonment. True, they cost me a terrific cold--and perhaps I may here be allowed to say that the guard-room was anything but clean--still, I learnt some very useful things. Indeed, I can hardly cry out against the injustice of it in view of the inestimable benefit I received and the insight it gave me. No, I am not sorry for having experienced, at the age of forty-six, the straw of the prison cell that every one admits to be damp and unhealthy. When the sergeant, who is not at all a bad fellow, though afflicted with a painful disease, came and told me, “Monsieur Bouin, you’ve got four days guard-room,” I was at first amazed and incredulous. At the same time, it was early in the day, and the sergeant, who never joked before his morning operation, added with a doleful expression: “Some one named Bouin ought to have been on duty last night in the hospital. But no one turned up. It wasn’t perhaps you, my poor Monsieur Bouin, who cut your job, but it’s certainly you who have four days’ imprisonment.” The sergeant stopped. I felt something gripping me in the pit of the stomach, and a heavy blush added to my discomfort. Right up to the first weeks of the war, my life had been peaceful and happy: there were some emotions I had not until then experienced, and I could not get accustomed to them, so that I was acutely conscious of the indignity I now had to suffer.