"And that isn't enough either, even when you're not a big eater and you're got a communication trench as flat as a pancake." "One meal in two days--a yellow mess, shining like gold, no broth and no meat--everything left behind." "And worst of all we've nothing to light a pipe with." "True, and that's misery. I haven't a single match. I had several bits of ends, but they've gone. I've hunted in vain through all the pockets of my flea-case--nix. As for buying them it's hopeless, as you say." "I've got the head of a match that I'm keeping." It is a real hardship indeed, and the sight is pitiful of the poilus who cannot light pipe or cigarette but put them away in their pockets and stroll in resignation. By good fortune, Tirloir has his petrol pipe-lighter and it still contains a little spirit. Those who are aware of it gather round him, bringing their pipes packed and cold. There is not even any paper to light, and the flame itself must be used until the remaining spirit in its tiny insect's belly is burned. As for me, I've been lucky, and I see Paradis wandering about, his kindly face to the wind, grumbling and chewing a bit of wood. "Tiens," I say to him, "take this." "A box of matches!" he exclaims amazed, looking at it as one looks at a jewel. "Egad! That's capital! Matches!" A moment later we see him lighting his pipe, his face saucily sideways and splendidly crimsoned by the reflected flame, and everybody shouts, "Paradis' got some matches!" Towards evening I meet Paradis near the ruined triangle of a house-front at the corner of the two streets of this most miserable among villages. He beckons to me. "Hist!" He has a curious and rather awkward air. "I say," he says to me affectionately, but looking at his feet, "a bit since, you chucked me a box of flamers. Well, you're going to get a bit of your own back for it. Here!" He puts something in my hand. "Be careful!" he whispers, "it's fragile!" Dazzled by the resplendent purity of his present, hardly even daring to believe my eyes, I see--an egg! XVI An Idyll "REALLY and truly," said Paradis, my neighbor in the ranks, "believe me or not, I'm knocked out--I've never before been so paid on a march as I have been with this one, this evening." His feet were dragging, and his square shoulders bowed under the burden of the knapsack, whose height and big irregular outline seemed almost fantastic. Twice he tripped and stumbled. Paradis is tough. But he had been running up and down the trench all night as liaison man while the others were sleeping, so he had good reason to be exhausted and to growl "Quoi? These kilometers must be made of india-rubber, there's no way out of it." Every three steps he hoisted his knapsack roughly up with a hitch of his hips, and panted under its dragging; and all the heap that he made with his bundles tossed and creaked like an overloaded wagon. "We're there," said a non-com.