"Our troops in the East are tip-top."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Perhaps, but you are hardly up to the same form."
What could one say without losing one's temper, a thing I was not in the least anxious to do.
After leaving the restaurant, we took a turn on the boulevards, where the increasing crowd was gathering. Lost in the streams of people, alternately bumped into or elbowed, it was impossible to keep up a connected conversation. So much the better. I was quite willing to forget the presence of my companion.
I was haunted by the thought that it was my last evening of liberty ...; after to-morrow my uniform would impose upon me the strictest restraint. I was making use of the final respite. I inhaled without displeasure the dusty air laden with the smells of acetylene gas and human emanations.
A lot of the shop windows had their shutters up and looked dismal, and looking up one could make out insolent German inscriptions. Angry bourgeois muttered as they passed, clenching their fists. People were talking of nothing but the hasty dismissals of the day before. The other shops flaunted their dazzling electric lights. The luminous sky-signs, intermittent and hallucinating, unrolled flamboyant zigzags and blazing coils. An unreal scene, well suited to the agitation of the hour! Soon it would be quenched and blotted out and dismal.... Paris was lavishing her final brilliance. What gaps were to be made by to-morrow's call in this multitude promenading their quivering city with such pride! I tried to read his secret on the face of each man of an eligible age for military service. Was he going to rejoin? and I felt inclined to shout to him:
"I'm going, you know; I'm one of you!"
My glance rested approvingly on the sturdy-looking fellows whose martial air under their képis I could well imagine. With their heads held high and their hands behind their backs, most of them looked about them with a superlatively good-natured expression, quite innocent of swagger.