The comrades of my twenty-first year! There is no age at which a life lived in common is responsible for forming more attachments than this one, but I was among those who had made the fewest friends during those ten months. I had had a room to myself in town, while many of them agreed to share with two or three others. I was considered a bore; a report which I had started, a state of affairs which I exploited, in order to escape endless fatigues. Beyond that I was neither liked nor disliked. They mistrusted my coldly mystifying disposition, they envied me the calm insolence with which I defied my non-commissioned officers. When the time came for separation, and the exchange of addresses, I did as the others did; without any illusions; nobody would bother to look me up, I felt sure. I was mistaken. Someone did come: Guillaumin. He was a grotesquely ugly chap, with a great thick red nose, short-sighted eyes, and a hoarse voice. A chatter-box, energetic and obliging, loved and chaffed by everyone. What should he do but get the idea into his head of keeping in touch with all those he had considered good fellows down there! And he had almost succeeded in doing so. He was the living index which one need only consult for information on the fate of all the old lot in our platoon. He dropped in to see me from time to time, on his way from the office where he vegetated as a clerk. We dined together on those evenings, and for him, I deserted Laquarrière, who, having caught sight of him one day, did not spare me his sarcasms on my grotesque "regimental friend." * * * * * I arrived in the station. It was swarming with reservists leaving to rejoin their regiment. Not many faces that I recognised. One already felt lost, and groups were formed instinctively. The first one I shook hands with was Laraque, the handsome Laraque, whose rosy shaven face and marked features, prepossessing and imperious at the same time, gave him simultaneously the air of a Roman Emperor or of a ballad prince. "Well, there we are!" he said. "Killing, what?" "Killing, oh rather. Got your ticket?" "What do you imagine! I think they might give us a free trip!" His tone showed me where I was. I could see that it was going to be the proper thing to take everything as a joke. Not to show one's feelings in any way.... Good! We should see how long that would last! I should have my revenge as an on-looker.