What is certain is that he was of a particularly lazy disposition. His least busy day he spent stretched out at full length, his head leaning against his valise, his legs in a rug which he had brought; quite idle, with his eyes open. This attitude drew upon him, besides Playoust's quips, the animosity of the company sergeant-major who, sticking his nose in at the door, would call him slyly: "Halloa there! De Valpic! As you're doing nothing!" Guillaumin continued to be my only intimate companion. I did not tell any one but him of my discovery of a hay-loft looking over the Principal's garden. He soon got in the habit of coming there often to join me. It became our headquarters. I now succeeded in persuading him to go about the town with me. We hardly left each other's side. In the evening he accompanied me to the door of the hotel where I had been able to find a room, and he went back to sleep on the straw. I had thought of asking him to share my bed; but how embarrassing for both of us! He would no doubt have refused. F---- seemed quite commonplace. I had seen it look pretty much the same each time the Division assembled for manoeuvres. There was the same stream of red trousers rolling through the streets at all hours, besieging the "pubs," and rifling the grocers' shops and bazaars, the shopkeepers' one idea being to exploit the reservists whose pockets were usually well-lined. The windows decked with bunting suggested the idea of an eve of the fourteenth of July, or of a visit from the President. The atmosphere was as calm as possible. Those who had expected riots, or a revolution! I only remember one incident. The report spread one afternoon that a spy had been discovered and arrested at the station.... In five minutes a crowd was shouting in front of the police-station where the transgressor, or transgressors--they talked now of three or four!--had been taken and put under arrest. Policemen were guarding the door. We waited for half an hour amid the growing feverishness. When they came out there was an outcry and a rush.... The shameful fury of crowds!... I caught sight of the two poor wretches, a man and a woman, little puny, terrified creatures. A motor took them away. They were both cowering under the menace of raised walking-sticks. The sight had irritated me. It was easy to say spies! I thought of our compatriots, caught unawares in Germany. It might have happened to me. I was there at the time of the Agadir trouble. I teased Guillaumin who had been as bad as the rest. He admitted that he had been in the wrong, but it was too much for him. The Bosches. The filthy Bosches! The lead had been heaved and soundings taken. All these people hid the sacred passion beneath their calm exterior. They were right. This nation had risen to butcher us. Between them and us a war of extermination was beginning.... And I could so easily have forgotten it! CHAPTER XIV THE EXISTING STATE OF MIND