Chance had thrown together in my section, Judsi and Lamalou, the two scoundrels whom I have already mentioned, among the stolid Beaucerons who were all so much alike that they might have been brothers. They were a scurvy couple. They had already been caught by a patrol one night in town, and brought back drunk, shouting and storming, and had been in such a dangerous mood next day that Henriot had not dared to haul them over the coals for it. The impressions I had retained of the few weeks once spent on a company, before going to the "Peloton," the one occasion in which I had come into contact for a short period with the lower classes, were these: The barrack was a den of wild beasts, and the peasants real brutes. The fact that the one thing they looked forward to was Sunday when they could drink themselves stupid, made them lower even than the animals. Beyond that the only thing that had worried me was the "promiscuousness." The days of ragging were over; I was free with my cigarettes and "drinks." I could always find someone ready to take my fatigues for me for the sake of a sixpence, and ever since then Bouillon had been my guardian angel. It did not matter how much this pleb was looked down on! Attached to my original company during the manoeuvres, reports had reached the ears of the reserve officer to the effect that I was already well up in my work, and I had at once been made a non-commissioned officer, a distant and unapproachable being. My energetic "command" ensured my authority, on the drill-ground at all events. Elsewhere?... There was no elsewhere. As for taking a personal interest in each of the men, and searching into, and investigating their characters, as Guillaumin tried to induce me, and forced himself to do,--the idea had never entered my head. To-day it seemed an idle fancy outside the realms of realisation. I felt that this mass of men was too remote from, and, in all probability, hostile to us. No, they did not count at all as individual souls! I listened to Guillaumin as he extolled their sound good sense, and sturdy morale. It was too much to ask of this poor food for cannons. But one thing struck me, nevertheless; the small, the infinitesimal number of men who "groused." Not a sign of "shirkers." It was astounding to me to note, in the days that followed, how this spirit had spread. I did not see any great enthusiasm, but rather determination, or perhaps it was resignation. There was at all events, no reluctance, no little underhand plots, elaborated with a view to remaining at the depôt. I have quoted our friend Belloeil; but even he would willingly have gone with us, I think, but for his asthma, which made him pant like a seal, merely at having to go up into billets. One drama, I remember, caused a sensation: a reservist who had thrown himself successively through a window, under a cart, and under a train. He was hard to kill, that fellow!