The hole in the hedge and the _estaminet_ beyond was all that saved him. There was a priest with a yellow beard, who also used the hole in the hedge. He used it almost every night, when it was open. He slipped out, got his drink, and then slipped down to the village to spend the night with a girl. Only he was crafty, and slipped back again through the hole before daylight, and was always on duty again in the morning. True, he was very cross and irritable, and the patients did without things rather than ask him for them, and sometimes they suffered a great deal, doing without things, on these mornings when he was so cross. But with Fouquet, it was different. He walked in boldly through the gates in the morning, and said that he had been out all night without leave, and that he was bored to the point of death. So the _Medecin Chef_ punished him. He imprisoned him, and as there was no prison, he served his six days' sentence in the open air. He donned his eighty pounds of marching kit, and tramped up and down the plank walks, and round behind the _baracques_, in the mud, in full sight of all, so that all might witness his humiliation. He did not go on duty again in the ward, and in consequence, the ward suffered through lack of his grudging, uncouth administration. Sometimes he met the _Directrice_ as he trudged up and down. He was always afraid to meet her, because once she had gone to the _Medecin Chef_ and had him pardoned. Her gentle heart had been touched at the sight of his public disgrace, so she had had his sentence remitted, and he had been obliged to go back to the ward, to the work he loathed, to the patients he despised, after only two hours' freedom in a rare October sun. Since then, he had carefully avoided the _Directrice_ when he saw her blue cloak in the distance, coming down the _trottoir_. Women were a nuisance at the Front. He frequently encountered the man who picked up papers, and frankly envied him, for this man had a very easy post. He was mobilized as a member of the _formation_ of Hospital Number ----, and his work consisted in picking up scraps of paper scattered about the grounds within the enclosure. He had a long stick with a nail in the end, and a small basket because there wasn't much to pick up. With the nail, he picked up what scraps there were, and did not even have to stoop over to do it. He walked about in the clean, fresh air, and when it rained, he cuddled up against the stove in the pharmacy. The present paper-gatherer was a chemist; his predecessor had been a priest. It was a very nice position for an able-bodied man with some education, and Fouquet greatly desired it himself, only he feared he was not sufficiently well educated, since in civil life he was only a farm hand. So in his march up and down the _trottoir_ he cast envious glances at the man who picked up papers.