I arrived in the station. It was swarming with reservists leaving to rejoin their regiment. Not many faces that I recognised. One already felt lost, and groups were formed instinctively.
The first one I shook hands with was Laraque, the handsome Laraque, whose rosy shaven face and marked features, prepossessing and imperious at the same time, gave him simultaneously the air of a Roman Emperor or of a ballad prince.
"Well, there we are!" he said. "Killing, what?"
"Killing, oh rather. Got your ticket?"
"What do you imagine! I think they might give us a free trip!"
His tone showed me where I was. I could see that it was going to be the proper thing to take everything as a joke. Not to show one's feelings in any way.... Good! We should see how long that would last! I should have my revenge as an on-looker.
Faron joined us, the son of the professor at the Sorbonne. He himself was a barrister, thin, energetic, and impenetrable. He buried himself in his newspapers. Then Holveck small and witty. He had just started a bank, with a branch in New York. Ladmiraut, an old Normalien with a puffy face and thick, hanging lips, an erudite pedant and a simple soul who used to be the picked target for all the practical jokes. Big Denais, the finished type of the don't-care-a-blow-for-any-one shover. Fortin, who had taken a degree in history, a lecturer and public speaker, not long returned from Germany, and already in search of a public.
It was a very lively scene. All meeting and recognising and calling to one another.
"Helloa Miquel, is that you?"
"What a nice surprise!"