Now nothing much more disastrous can happen to a légionnaire than to fall in love. It is not a common complaint amongst légionnaires; they have little time or inclination for the business, and if they had who would look at them or listen to them? A halfpenny a day, a position a little above that of a convict--nice prospects to lay at the feet of any girl. Nothing more hopeless than this passion of Raboustel could be well imagined, yet he never thought of that, and she never thought of it either. They were in love one with the other, that was the only thing they thought of. But the Legion was not to be denied or flouted. It had its revenge on this man who dared to think of other things than the bitterness of life, who dared to catch the white bird Love and hold it clasped to the tunic of a légionnaire. It hit him first in the pocket. Out of a halfpenny a day you cannot save much to buy presents with, and the first instinct of a man in love is to offer a present to the woman he loves. Jacques at that time was carrying on a small traffic in birds, it was a business he took up and dropped with the seasons, and as it happened to be then the full swing of the season he was fairly occupied in his leisure hours buying and trapping birds. One day near the barracks he met Raboustel, noted that he was dejected and out of sorts and asked the reason. "It is nothing," said Raboustel. "I know that nothing," replied the other. "I have suffered from it myself. Come, out with it, is it the food that's making you sick?" "I have nothing to say against the food." "Ah, then it's just the barracks, I know that feeling." "I have nothing to say against the barracks." "You haven't!" cried Jacques, with a burst of laughter. "Then you must be singularly easy to please. Ah, I know, you are homesick." Raboustel laughed. "I have not thought of home for a week. No, you are wrong, Corporal, it is neither the food, nor the barracks, nor the thought of home that is troubling me, it is something else." He told his position in a few words. He had come to care for a girl and he had no money with which to buy her a present, nothing to offer her. Jacques listened. At the word "girl" he had been on the point of laughing, then he saw in a flash that this was a serious business for Raboustel. The position of a man in the Legion is such that honest aspirations and ambitions are absurd, unless they be purely military, and even then they are rarely fulfilled, and as for love! Jacques whistled when the other told him all. "You will have trouble there," said he. "You will have the old man on top of you; does he know about it?" "Not he," said Raboustel. "Well, he is sure to get to know, and then your trouble will begin. You see, you are a légionnaire." "Well, what of that?"