“What! What do you say?”
“I said twelve million,” answered the Frenchman phlegmatically and with assurance. “It is official. Don’t you read your papers? It was written in capital letters in the Cologne Gazette a few days ago. They have been drilled in India, and last winter in Egypt; they will come to France and stay till the beginning of the cold weather. There are twelve million. You know that Marseilles is universally noted for its soap, and that there are very important factories there. Well, the Hindoos are there, and are already anointing their bodies with the soap of Marseilles. They will soon be ready, and will probably arrive at the front at the same time as you. I wish you joy.”
“Ach Gott!” The sentinel goes off with his head bent. His pipe had gone out, his cheeks had still a little colour, but his eyes were mournful, full of unspeakable sadness.
Twelve million Hindoos, negroes, the 75’s, and the typhus! Certainly he would never return. The Hindoos were already a nightmare to him, he saw them creeping over the soil from which they were not to be distinguished, standing up, threatening, behind trees. It was horrible! He was going off that night never to come back. He would fall a victim to the Hindoos before he had time to say a last prayer for his family. Ah, why had he not died in Poland? It was terrible to go and meet this death, which he felt was coming and yet which would take him by surprise. Ah, it was a bad war!
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The sentinel who came to relieve his comrade had to strike him twice on the shoulder before he roused him to tell him to go and eat.
He jumped as though he had been in a dream; he looked at his colleague without understanding, mute and terrified, for between the speaker and himself he saw standing the fatal Hindoo in whose hands lay his destiny.
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When he sat down to his frugal meal the Boche had to own that he had no appetite.