"Oh, he'd better stay at the depôt!" Then, turning to the man, he would growl: "You'll have to stay behind my lad!" A well-set-up fellow out of my section came and announced: "I'm an old trooper, I am!" "Well, what about it?" "And so I shan't march." "Oh, you think so, do you?" "I never have marched." "A good opportunity to learn!" "It's on account of a slight rupture...." "Let's have a look!" Bouchut felt his groin. "You wear a truss, do you?" "Yes, sir-r!" "In that case you can walk round the world!" "But...." "Off with you! Brr! Next man now!" The next one on the list was De Valpic. I considered his thin body with all the ribs showing. "What's the matter with you?" Bouchut asked. "Nothing much, sir, but the captain told me to...." Bouchut bent down over him: "Take a deep breath...." Just then a hubbub arose, an orderly was slating a man who had just upset the bottle containing the tincture of iodine. "Can't you keep quiet, confound you!" But Bouchut's attention was again distracted by the arrival of a surgeon-lieutenant. They gossiped for a moment and then returning at last to De Valpic, he said: "Then you don't cough at all?" "Hardly at all, sir." "Do you want to go to the front?" "Certainly, sir." "Very well, then. Must not be overdone," he dictated to me. The examination came to an end. When I went out I came across the man with the rupture again. He was cursing and swearing! "Well, if that wasn't a shame! To make an old dragoon, with an illness like that, walk! They were a set of bullies, that's what they were!..." But he'd be even with them yet! He knew a thing or two. The first time they were under fire, he would stagger, and let himself fall. But first, he was going to write to Sembat, who was a pal of his. "Switch off Loriot!" somebody warned him. "Here come the N.C.O.'s!" I wondered whether I should pack him off to the defaulters' room.... Perhaps it would raise my prestige, but I let the opportunity slip by, and finally decided to have heard nothing. Guillaumin came up to me. He was bringing the letters from the barracks and good-naturedly drew my attention to the fact that I was the one who ought to have gone to fetch them. He agreed in addition to be responsible for their distribution. He was rummaging in his pockets. "There's a post card for you." A post card really! I was not expecting anything. A few lines from my father and a note from Laquarriére, in answer to one I had written him, was all I had received since the beginning. I looked at the post mark; illegible. I did not recognise the handwriting, it was feminine. I turned to the signature: "Jeannine!" The little Landry girl!