Towards eight o'clock the heavy clouds were dissipated by the sun, and the bright, hot August Sunday shone upon Mulhausen, nestling amid the broad fertile plain. From the camp, now wide awake and buzzing with life, one could hear the bells of all the parish churches ringing out in full peal through the limpid atmosphere. Fraught though it was with a terrible disaster, this beautiful Sunday was a gay one, and the sky had a festive brilliancy. When Gaude suddenly sounded the call to rations, Loubet affected great astonishment. What would there be? Some of that fowl which he had promised to Lapoulle the night before? Born amid the Paris Halles, in the Rue de la Cossonnerie, Loubet was the chance offspring of a market woman, and had enlisted, so he expressed it, for money's sake, after trying in turn a variety of callings. Fond of his stomach, he had a keen scent for dainty morsels, so he went off to see the rations distributed, whilst Chouteau, the artist--in reality a house painter of Montmartre--a handsome man and a revolutionist, who was furious at having been kept in the army after completing his time, began chaffing Pache, whom he had caught saying his prayers, on his knees, behind the tent. Pache, a sorry-looking little fellow with a pointed head, coming from some far-away village in Picardy, submitted to the chaffing with the patient gentleness of a martyr. He, and that colossus Lapoulle--a brutish peasant reared amid the Sologne marshes, and so stupendously ignorant that on joining the regiment he had asked to be shown the King--were the butts of the squad. Although the news of the disaster of Frœschweiler had been current since the reveille, the four men laughed together, and set about their accustomed tasks with the indifference of machines. A bantering growl of surprise was heard when Corporal Jean, accompanied by Maurice, came back from the rationing with some firewood. So the supply which the men had vainly awaited the evening before in order to cook their _soupe_ had arrived at last. There had merely been twelve hours' delay. 'A good mark for the commissariat!' exclaimed Chouteau. 'Never mind, we've got it now!' said Loubet. 'You shall see what a capital _pot-au-feu_ I'll make you.' He willingly took charge of the cooking as a rule; and the others thanked him for doing so, for he was a capital cook. But on these occasions he would overwhelm Lapoulle with extraordinary fatigue-duties. 'Go and fetch the champagne,' he would say to him, 'go and fetch the truffles.' That morning a comical idea, worthy of a Parisian _gamin_ poking fun at a fool, came into his head: 'Make haste!' he cried; 'give me the fowl.' 'The fowl--why, where is it?' 'Why, there, on the ground. The fowl I promised you, the fowl the corporal brought.' So saying he pointed to a large white stone lying at their feet. Lapoulle, quite amazed, ended by picking up the stone and turning it over in his hands.