At this juncture an officer comes in. M. Poisson exclaims:
“It’s you, Perrin? Oh, my dear fellow, let me alone, will you, to get on with this job! You see I am tired out with the work. Just look at my list: nineteen! I’ll never get to the end! Nineteen!”
The officer takes me by the arm and says:
“Oh! but this is the extra man that has been sent to us.”
Then M. Poisson comes nearer, looks at me closely, and bellows, his breath reeking with alcohol:
“Send him to the mortuary! Some one is wanted there. He can help Tanquerelle. To the mortuary! And no more nonsense!”
Ten minutes later I am stationed at the mortuary.
I became, sir, very wretched. I am fairly cheerful as a rule, but moving corpses about all day long cannot be called life. And such dead! The flower of the country, degraded to a depth which imagination cannot fathom.
Tanquerelle is an old butcher’s assistant. He too drinks. He is always given the most unpleasant work because he drinks, and his unpleasant work is an excuse for giving him more drinks. But I am not going to expatiate on that. The drink question is not my business, unfortunately.