"But doesn't that strike you funny? Why down where I come from a drunken mulatto woman wouldn't act like that. They all keep up a fake of not wantin' your attentions." His black eyes sparkled, and he laughed his deep ringing laugh, that made the withered woman smile as she set an omelette before them. "Voilà, messieurs," she said with a grand air, as if it were a boar's head that she was serving. Three French infantrymen came into the café, shaking the rain off their shoulders. "Nothing to drink but champagne at four francs fifty," shouted Howe. "Dirty night out, isn't it?" "We'll drink that, then!" Howe and Randolph moved up and they all sat at the same table. "Fortune of war?" "Oh, the war, what do you think of the war?" cried Martin. "What do you think of the peste? You think about saving your skin." "What's amusing about us is that we three have all saved our skins together," said one of the Frenchmen. "Yes. We are of the same class," said another, holding up his thumb. "Mobilised same day." He held up his first finger. "Same company." He held up a second finger. "Wounded by the same shell.... Evacuated to the same hospital. Convalescence at same time.... Réformé to the same depôt behind the lines." "Didn't all marry the same girl, did you, to make it complete?" asked Randolph. They all shouted with laughter until the glasses along the bar rang. "You must be Athos, Porthos, and d'Artagnan." "We are," they shouted. "Some more champagne, madame, for the three musketeers," sang Randolph in a sort of operatic yodle. "All I have left is this," said the withered woman, setting a bottle down on the table. "Is that poison?" "It's cognac, it's very good cognac," said the old woman seriously. "C'est du cognac! Vive le roi cognac!" everybody shouted. "_Au plein de mon cognac Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, Au plein de mon cognac Qu'il fait bon dormir._" "Down with the war! Who can sing the 'Internationale'?" "Not so much noise, I beg you, gentlemen," came the withered woman's whining voice. "It's after hours. Last week I was fined. Next time I'll be closed up." The night was black when Martin and Randolph, after lengthy and elaborate farewells, started down the muddy road towards the hospital. They staggered along the slippery footpath beside the road, splashed every instant with mud by camions, huge and dark, that roared grindingly by. They ran and skipped arm-in-arm and shouted at the top of their lungs: "_Auprès de ma blonde, Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, Auprès de ma blonde, Qu'il fait bon dormir._" A stench of sweat and filth and formaldehyde caught them by the throat as they went into the hospital tent, gave them a sense of feverish bodies of men stretched all about them, stirring in pain. * * * * * "A car for la Bassée, Ambulance 4," said the orderly.