The group of officers were now going down the wide stairs, in a tumult of voices and footsteps.
A feeling of uneasiness, it seemed to me, gave a slight chill to the conversation. As we arrived under the arches, I heard M. Briavoine saying to M. Coupé:
“It’s the first time, since the war, that I meet the Chief of the Medical Staff, General Dufrêne.”
He added, not without a certain gravity of tone:
“Vernier, go back and see if they have swept the subalterns’ room. Some cotton was lying about there just now.”
“Hang it!” mumbled Proby; “he must not come and interfere with us. And he’s going to be received like this! We’ll tell him—what!—we’ll tell him a thing or two.”
“We will tell him, right enough,” said M. Briavoine with decision. “We’ll tell him that the hospital is badly lighted; the gas-pipes and water-pipes are innumerable; that the food is not as it should be——”
“I shall not stick at anything,” interrupted Father Coupé: “I shall insist on the important improvements I want for my work.”
As we got to the steps of the entrance, Professor Proby became suddenly irascible, and, taking on one side one of the attendants who was wearing a white coat, said to him:
“You, there! Get yourself into uniform. It looks better.”