"I'm forgetting to tell you," cried Crillon, "that they had news of your regiment a few days ago. Little Mélusson's had his head blown to bits in an attack. Here, y'know; he was a softy and an idler. Well, he was attacking like a devil. War remakes men like that!"
"Termite?" I asked.
"Ah, yes! Termite the poacher! Why it's a long time since they haven't seen him. Disappeared, it seems. S'pose he's killed."
Then he talks to me of this place. Brisbille, for instance, always the same, a Socialist and a scandal.
"There's him," says Crillon, "and that dangerous chap Eudo as well, with his notorient civilities. Would you believe it, they've not been able to pinch him for his spying proclensities! Nothing in his past life, nothing in his conductions, nothing in his expensiture, nothing to find fault with. Mustn't he be a deep one?"
I presume to think—suppose it was all untrue? Yet it seemed a formidable task to upset on the spot one of the oldest and most deeply rooted creeds in our town. But I risk it. "Perhaps he's innocent."
Crillon jumps, and shouts, "What! You suspect him of being innocent!" His face is convulsed and he explodes with an enormous laugh, a laugh irresistible as a tidal wave, the laugh of all!
"Talking about Termite," says Crillon a moment later, "it seems it wasn't him that did the poaching."
The military convalescents are leaving the tavern. Crillon watches them go away with their parallel movements and their sticks.
"Yes, there's wounded here and there's dead there!" he says; "all those who hadn't got a privilential situation! Ah, la, la! The poor devils, when you think of it, eh, what they must have suffered! And at this moment, all the time, there's some dying. And we stand it very well, an' hardly think of it. They didn't need to kill so many, that's certain—there's been faults and blunders, as everybody knows of. But fortunately," he adds, with animation, putting on my shoulder the hand that is big as a young animal, "the soldiers' deaths and the chief's blunders, that'll all disappear one fine day, melted away and forgotten in the glory of the victorious Commander!"