"Rub it in!" snaps Porchon. "I agree that I was a fool and that is enough. Now please leave me in peace with the memory of that pot of honey I obtained at Rupt, of which you, chuckling with concupiscence, gorged at least a half, the other night before Saint Remy, notwithstanding the fact that the bodies in the ditches were smelling sufficiently vilely to destroy the appetite of any normal respectable being." At this moment, M----, the old volunteer from California, approaches, cap in hand. In tones deliberate and grave, pronouncing each syllable distinctly and meticulously, he says: "I beg the lieutenants to pardon me. I could not, however, help overhearing a few words of your conversation, and I gather you have had nothing to eat. Before leaving for the front, I provided myself with a considerable amount of chocolate, and as some of it is still left, I should be very happy indeed...." "Not at all, M----. You must keep it. You won't be able to get any more, you know, and it is a thing of which one can never have too much." He insists, however, with such cordiality and sincerity, that in the end we are compelled to accept half the chocolate he offers us. We divide it and carefully nibble at our respective portions to make them last as long as possible. "Have you any tobacco?" asks Porchon, when it is finished. "You know quite well I have, also that I have no cigarette papers, since you helped me to finish up the last four this morning." At that M---- calls aloud: "Gabriel!" Little Butrel rushes up to us. "You have some cigarette papers! Pass them around." Butrel draws from his pocket a bundle of them, and slowly unfolds the leather in which they are wrapped. Then he offers us a packet almost intact, a treasure which he extends with a smile in his blue eyes and about his thin lips. Once again we find ourselves compelled to accept another's kindness. "I know where to find more," Butrel assures us. "There are some good friends of mine among the artillerymen over at hill X----, and they can get as many as they want." "But if we remain out here at the advance posts for long, how will you manage then, when your friends the artillerymen are no longer available?" "Please do not worry about that! When my cigarette-papers are finished, then I will chew or smoke a pipe. Take what you wish ... one packet, because that will give me pleasure; a second one because that will please old grandfather. Is that not so, grandfather?" M---- shakes his head, smiles and turns to us: "I must tell you that he has been kindness itself to me since I rejoined. And yesterday in the woods, he saved my life. He stood up in the clearing to fire at the Boches, thus giving me time to get to the hilltop. It lasted quite five minutes, and all the time he was firing he was moving down towards them.... Name of a joke! but one would have said that he was playing to get himself killed."