Dans votre salon directoire
(Bleu lavande et jaune citron)
De vieux fauteuils voisineront
Dans un style contradictoire
Avec un divan sans histoire
(Bleu lavande et jaune citron).
A des merveilleuses notoires
(Bleu lavande et jaune citron)
Des muscadins à cinq chevrons
Diront la prochaine victoire,
En des domains ostentatoires
(Bleu lavande et jaune citron).
Les murs nus comme un mur d'église
(Bleu lavande et jaune citron)
Quelque temps encore attendront
Qu'un premier consul brutalise
Leur calme et notre Directoire
De son visage péremptoire
(OEil bleu lavande et teint citron).
"Are you a poet?" the colonel asked me doubtfully, when he saw me writing lines of equal length.
I denied the soft impeachment.
CHAPTER V
It had been raining for four days. The heavy raindrops played a monotonous tattoo on the curved roof of the tent. Outside in the field the grass had disappeared under yellow mud, in which the men's footsteps sounded like the smacking of a giant's lips.
"'And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt,'" recited the padre; "'and God said to Noah, Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened,'" continued the doctor.
"The Flood," he added, "was a real event, for its description is common to all oriental mythology. No doubt the Euphrates had burst its banks; that's why the Ark was driven into the interior and came to rest on a hill. Similar catastrophes often occur in Mesopotamia and in India, but are rare in Belgium."
"The cyclone of 1876 killed 215,000 people in Bengal," said the colonel. "Messiou, send round the port, please."
The colonel loved statistics, to the great misfortune of Aurelle, who, quite incapable of remembering figures, was interrogated every day on the number of inhabitants in a village, the strength of the Serbian army, or the initial velocity of the French bullet. He foresaw with terror that the colonel was going to ask him the average depth of rain in feet and inches in Flanders, and he hastened to create a diversion.
"I found in Poperinghe," he said, showing the book he was reading, "this very curious old volume. It is a description of England and Scotland by the Frenchman, Etienne Perlin, Paris, 1558."