At last!!!
White wine, brandy, fine preserves. Sub-Lieutenant Delpos never lacks for anything even in the most tragic hours of his life.
He makes an elegant and comfortable dugout out of the most filthy hole.
Ten miles from the living world, six feet under ground, in the midst of the shell fire, ten feet from the enemy, he offers me, with a laugh, a meal which is prodigious under the circumstances.
Coharé makes coffee on a burner and he flavors it with brandy.
We talk of many things, of a thousand things, all a hundred leagues removed from the war. We talk about Marseilles.
Sub-Lieutenant Delpos is a lover of its picturesqueness, of its color, its sun—we are in a deep sap lighted by a smoky candle—the sun means something to us, something fairylike and superhuman. To think that at that hour there are people living under clear skies, coming and going and breathing the strong sea breeze, and drinking in with their eyes that perpetual delight—a sunset on the rocks of Frioul!
And the women of Marseilles! They are the quintessence of France, revivified by the air of the Mediterranean. Just think, mon cher, of a villa perched in the pines, facing the sea, in the valley of L’Oriol, with a brunette that I know,
...! ...!