“You are somewhat sunburnt, Monsieur Roux,” said Madame Bergeret, “and rather thinner, I fancy. But it suits you well enough.” “The first few months are trying,” answered M. Roux. “Drill, of course, in the barrack-yard at six o’clock in the morning and with eight degrees of frost is rather a painful process, and just at first one finds it difficult to look on the mess as appetising. But weariness is, after all, a great blessing, stupefaction a priceless remedy and the stupor in which one lives is as soporific as a feather-bed. And because at night one only sleeps in snatches, by day one is never wide awake. And this state of automatic lethargy in which we all live is admirably conducive to discipline, it suits the tone of military life and produces physical and moral efficiency in the ranks.” In short, M. Roux had nothing to complain of, but one of his friends, a certain Deval, a student of Malay at the school of Oriental languages, was plunged in the depths of misery and despair. Deval, an intelligent, well-educated, intrepid man, was cursed with a sort of rigidity of mind and body that made him tactless and awkward. In addition to this he was harassed by a painfully exact sense of justice which gave him peculiar views of his rights and duties. This unfortunate turn of mind landed him in all sorts of troubles, and he had not been more than twenty-four hours in barracks before Sergeant Lebrec demanded, in terms which must needs be softened for Madame Bergeret’s sake, what ill-conducted being had given birth to such a clumsy cub as Number Five. It took Deval a long time to make sure that he, and none other, was actually Number Five. He had, in fact, to be put under arrest before he was convinced on the subject. Even then he could not see why the honour of Madame Deval, his mother, should be called in question because he himself was not exactly in line. His sense of justice was outraged by his mother’s being unexpectedly declared responsible in this matter, and at the end of four months he was still a prey to melancholy amazement at the idea.