While the judge's son was telling the news, the colonel of the 128th and Captain Fracasse were eating their biscuits together and making occasional remarks rather than holding a conversation. "Well, Westerling is a field-marshal," said the colonel. "Yes, he's got something out of it!" "The men seem to be losing their spirit--there's no doubt of it!" exclaimed the colonel, more aloud to himself than to Fracasse, after a while. "No wonder!" replied Fracasse. Martinet though he was, he spoke in grumbling loyalty to his soldiers. "What kind of spirit is there in doing the work of navvies? Spirit! No soldiers ever fought better--in invasion, at least. Look at our losses! Spirit! Westerling drives us in. He thinks we can climb Niagara Falls! He--" "Stop! You're talking like an anarchist!" snapped the colonel. "How can the men have spirit when you feel that way?" "I shall continue to obey orders and do my duty, sir!" replied Fracasse. "And they will, too, or I'll know the reason why." There was a silence, but at length the colonel exploded: "I suppose Westerling knows what he is doing!" "Still, we must go on! We must win!" "Yes, the offensive always wins in the end. We must go on!" "And once we have the range--yes, once we've won one vital position--the men will recover their enthusiasm and be crying: 'On to the capital!'" "Right! We were forgetting history. We were forgetting the volatility of human nature." XLI WITH FELLER AND STRANSKY Far up on a peak among the birds and aeroplanes, in a roofed, shell-proof chamber, with a telephone orderly at his side, a powerful pair of field-glasses and range-finders at his elbow, and a telescope before his eye, Gustave Feller, one-time gardener and now acting colonel of artillery, watched the burst of shells over the enemy's lines. While other men had grown lean on war, he had taken on enough flesh to fill out the wrinkles around eyes that shone with an artist's enjoyment of his work. Down under cover of the ridge were his guns, the keys of the instrument that he played by calls over the wire. Their barking was a symphony to his ears; errors of orchestration were errors in aim. He talked as he watched, his lively features reflective of his impressions. "Oh, pretty! Right into their tummies! Right in the nose! La, la, la! But that's off--and so's that! Tell Battery C they're fifty yards over. Oh, beady-eyed gods and shiny little fishes--two smacks in the same spot! Humph! Tell Battery C that the trouble with that gun is worn rifling; that's why it's going short. Elevate it for another hundred yards--but it ought not to wear out so soon. I'd like to kick the maker or the inspector. The fellows in B 21 will accuse us of inattention. It's time to drop a shell on them to show we're perfectly impartial in our favors. La, la, la! Oh, what a pretty smack! Congratulations!" B 21 was the position of Fracasse's company and the pretty smack the one that broke one man's arm and crushed another's head.