slumber where I distinctly heard all the noises of the
camp—the sounding of the bugle, the neighing of
the horses as if coming from afar I was thinking of
the people and the things I had left behind me. A
thousand images and a thousand scenes of the past
rapidly filed before my eyes. I saw again the Priory,
my dead mother and my father, with his large straw
hat and the short beggar with his flaxen hair and
Felix squatted in the lettuce patches, lying in wait
for a mole. I saw again my study room, my school
mates and, topping the noise of the Bal Bullier, Nini,
her hair loose and brown, with her ruddy neck and her
pink stockings showing like some lascivious flower
from under the skirt raised in dancing. Then the
image of an unknown woman in a yellow dress, whom
I noticed in the shadow of a box in a theatre one
evening, came back to me an insistent and sweet
vision.
During this time the strongest among us had gone out to roam in the fields and on the farms. They came back merrily carrying bundles of straw, chickens, turkeys and ducks. One of them was driving before him with a switch, a big, grunting pig; another was balancing a sheep on his shoulder. At the end of a halter the latter was also dragging a calf which, tangled up in the rope, resisted comically and shook its snout, bellowing all the time. The peasants came up running to the camp to complain that they had been robbed; they were hooted and driven out.
The general, very stiff and with round eyes, came to review us in the afternoon, accompanied by our lieutenant who walked at his right. His shiny look, his flushed cheeks, his mealy voice bore witness to the fact that he had had a plentiful breakfast. He was munching the end of an extinguished cigar; he spat, sniffed, swore. One could not tell at whom
