Yesterday passed gloomily. The men of the guard, like all those who have not been at the front, were spiteful and meddlesome. The patrol refused to allow us to set foot upon the slopes, even insisting that we must remain in the mud and puddles of the lower courts. Brissot and I contended that they did not know the regulations, and that the great track half-way up which dominates the two courts was certainly within bounds. Anyhow, taking advantage of the mist, I had before sunrise walked as usual on the forbidden escarp. Then, having a slight cold, and feeling poorly, I lay down upon a pile of palliasses in the Salle du Jeu de Paume, and spent the day in re-reading _Eugénie Grandet_, which Corporal Henriot had just received from Paris. But I was thinking more about the baron’s departure than about old Grandet. The others were playing chess. “What a fine chap he is!” exclaimed Détry. “Riou, old boy, we ought to make him a grand speech when he leaves. Did you see the farewell note he sent round the casemates? He thanks his ‘fellow-workers.’ He courteously congratulates every one. He wishes us good luck. There’s a man for you, one who has never failed to treat us as men. Nothing of the Ploss about him!” * * * * * Lying with my head beneath the rug, my book closed, and my eyes shut, it suddenly seemed to me that the recent weeks had been almost enjoyable. I forgot the long nights of the first month or so, when my stomach was continually gnawing, and when the memories of meals eaten before the war, their steam, their odour, were so vivid as to constitute a veritable torture of Tantalus. Forgetting home-sickness and tedium, I found myself looking back wistfully to that which in actual experience had appeared horrible. It seemed to me that with the transfer of von Stengel a fresh imprisonment was about to begin, harassing, with no security, and inhuman; that henceforward I should be truly in prison. An end, I said to myself, to our evening walks on the roads adjoining the fort. An end to those pleasant saunters in the twilight, a little band of five or six, almost as good as a tête-à-tête after the life of the herd. Our new master, just married, will devote his leisure to his wife. Possibly, moreover, as the baron has suggested, the recent escape of four English officers from Fort Hartmann will make the new commandant very strict.… All at once it was borne in on me that the last few weeks had been at the same time melancholy and pleasing.… * * * * *