But Dedouche was summoning me. I turned and observed him leisurely. Dedouche is an excellent fellow. Without even knowing him one would guess it at first glance. He is good-natured, never in a hurry, no matter how urgent his errand, and indifferent alike to blows and invectives. He smiles under torrents of abuse and threats of the most terrible punishments, and does his duty as man of all work silently. In a word, he possesses all the qualities inherent in his duty. He is tall and spare; his face is beardless and sanctimonious; his eyes smile, but they look far away under his great round glasses with their large rims. All in all Dedouche looks like a lay brother. To complete the illusion, when he talks he has a habit of thrusting his hands into the large sleeves of his jacket and lowering his head to look over his spectacles. In civil life Dedouche was an assistant in a pharmacy in one of the large provincial cities. He knows the art of making up learned formulae. His long slim fingers manage the most fragile things with skill, and his grave voice is accustomed to the mezzotints of the laboratory. “Yes,” I answered at last, “it is I.” “The lieutenant wants you.” I gulped down my plate of macaroni in two mouthfuls, swallowed the coffee which the cook, already attentive to my wants, held out to me, and followed Dedouche the two hundred yards which separated us from the billets. Two hundred yards is nothing, and yet it is a world. In less time than it takes to tell it I learned a mass of things from Dedouche. First, what part of the country we are from. The ... first Colonials was organized in the South. So, in the hope of finding in each newcomer another “countryman,” Dedouche asked the new arrival at once, “What part of the country are you from?” He had some doubt about my reply. A Hussar of a regiment with an unknown number, who had given little opportunity to study his accent, might be a man from the North or the East. “One never knows with these cavalrymen,” he seemed to say, “they’re so uncertain.” So he changed the form and varied his traditional question somewhat, “You’re not from the South, by chance, Sergeant?” At this repetition of his offense about my title, I thought that I ought to slip in a discreet observation, so I said, “In the cavalry, my friend, the sergeant is called ‘_maréchal des logis_.’” And then having satisfied my slightly offended _esprit de corps_, I replied, “Yes, mon _vieux_, I am from the South, in fact from the Mediterranean, from L’Herault.” “How things happen!” exclaimed Dedouche. “I’m from Le Clapas.”