I felt that he was moved. I pretended to be. But I was chilled again. I only thought like the other evening, under my father's gaze: "I a Lorrain! In what am I a Lorrain?" And the idea that I should have brothers and foes, just because I was born on this side, and not on that side of a certain line, seemed to me grotesque.
It was about time for "cookhouse door" to go. Our card-players reappeared. I enjoyed first their surprise, then their only thin-veiled annoyance. It was particularly aggravating for the schoolmasters. Henriot, with his hand on my shoulder, was talking to me as to an intimate confidant. They began to wander round, anxious to interrupt us, but withheld from doing so by their deeply-rooted respect for rank.
Great Heavens! if I had guessed what would put an end to our conversation!
Henriot stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence.
"Hsh! What's that...?"
"That dull distant rumble...."
The men scattered about in the road and in the yard, were listening intently. Corporal Bouguet who was passing muttered:
"No, it can't be...?"
It began again, like the echo of a peal of thunder....
Then the subaltern pronounced the word I had expected: