"I'm fixing things, and clearing up."
The quasi-brigand who appears to be checking his booty, is my comrade Volpatte. He has folded his tent-cloth in four and placed it on his bed—that is, on the truss of straw assigned to him—and on this carpet he has emptied and displayed the contents of his pockets.
And it is quite a shop that he broods over with a housewife's solicitous eyes, watchful and jealous, lest some one walks over him. With my eye I tick off his copious exhibition.
Alongside his handkerchief, pipe, tobacco-pouch (which also contains a note-book), knife, purse, and pocket pipe-lighter, which comprise the necessary and indispensable groundwork, here are two leather laces twisted like earthworms round a watch enclosed in a case of transparent celluloid, which has curiously dulled and blanched with age. Then a little round mirror, and another square one; this last, though broken, is of better quality, and bevel-edged. A flask of essence of turpentine, a flask of mineral oil nearly empty, and a third flask, empty. A German belt-plate, bearing the device, "Gott mit uns"; a dragoon's tassel of similar origin; half wrapped in paper, an aviator's arrow in the form of a steel pencil and pointed like a needle; folding scissors and a combined knife and fork of similar pliancy; a stump of pencil and one of candle; a tube of aspirin, also containing opium tablets, and several tin boxes.
Observing that my inspection of his personal possessions is detailed, Volpatte helps me to identify certain items—
"That, that's a leather officer's glove. I cut the fingers off to stop up the mouth of my blunderbuss with; that, that's telephone wire, the only thing to fasten buttons on your greatcoat with if you want 'em to stay there; and here, inside here, d'you know what that is? White thread, good stuff, not what you're put off with when they give you new things, a sort of macaroni au fromage that you pull out with a fork; and there's a set of needles on a post-card. The safety-pins, they're there, separate."
"And here, that's the paper department. Quite a library."
There is indeed a surprising collection of papers among the things disgorged by Volpatte's pockets—the violet packet of writing-paper, whose unworthy printed envelope is out at heels; an Army squad-book, of which the dirty and desiccated binding, like the skin of an old tramp, has perished and shrunk all over: a note-book with a chafed moleskin cover, and packed with papers and photographs, those of his wife and children enthroned in the middle.
Out of this bundle of yellowed and darkened papers Volpatte extracts this photograph and shows it to me once more. I renew acquaintance with Madame Volpatte and her generous bosom, her mild and mellow features; and with the two little boys in white collars, the elder slender, the younger round as a ball.
"I've only got photos of old people," says Biquet, who is twenty years old. He shows us a portrait holding it close to the candle, of two aged people who look at us with the same well-behaved air as Volpatte's children.