"Ah! Mr. Brown, you have things to do. You do not suffer, as we others, from nostalgia—the home-sickness, you understand? I sigh for Paris, for the boulevards, the cafés, the Opera, for anything, anything, but this Moukden. It is five weeks that I am here; I have my paper, my pencils, my authorization; I have presented to the Viceroy my letter of credit, my photograph, as it is ordained. I have the red band on my arm; you see it: the letters B.K., correspondent of war; also Chinese arabesques, one says they mean 'Him who spies out the military things!' and here I am still in Moukden. I spy out no military things; I broil myself with sun, choke myself with dust; it is not possible to go to the south, where the war is made; no, it is permitted to do anything but what I am sent for; I become meagre with disappointment."
"Cheer up! Yours is a hard lot, no doubt. The modern general has no liking for you correspondents. But you will get your chance, no doubt, in time. The Japanese are coming north. There has been a fight at Wa-fang-ho, I hear."
"What!" cried the Frenchman, starting up. "A battle and I not there! I hear of no battle. Colonel Pestitch hear of none. I ask him just now. Does he tell me lie—prevaricate?"
"He probably knows nothing about it. I knew it through a Chinaman yesterday. The natives outdo the telegraph, Monsieur, especially the telegraph with a censor at one end. But, in fact, I have more than once heard the result of an engagement before even the military authorities."
Monsieur Brin walked up and down the little office impatiently twisting his moustache.
"Ah! It is abominable—but yes, abominable. Of what good that France is the ally of Russia? I might be Japanese, or Englishman, with no alliance at all. Why did I quit Paris? To put on this odious red badge, like a convict. For what? To promenade myself about Moukden, from day to day, from week to week, in prey to hundred Chinese diseases, subject to thousand Chinese odours! Ah, quelle malaise, quel désappointement, quel spleen!"
"You're in low spirits to-day, Monsieur. Why don't you go about the country and see the sights?"
"The sights! I have seen them. I have seen the tombs. They do not equal the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame. Pouah! My throat fills itself with dust, or my feet stick fast in the mud. For the rest, if I go farther I fall into the hands of the Koungouzes, the brigands; they have asperity; I have respect for my skin."
"Look here, Monsieur, this won't do. You'll make yourself ill if you take things so hardly. What do you say to this, now? My boy is going some fifteen miles out to a farm, to see some friends of ours—Chinese, you understand. Why not go with him and see something of the Chinese at home? Our friend Mr. Wang has an interesting family; you'll enjoy it, and get material for one article at least for the Soleil."
"Ah! it is an idea. We go—how?"