Porchon has discovered some plum jam. Jam?—it is rather a compound of quinces scarcely sweetened.
"I paid seven sous a quarter for this mixture," he informs me. "The pigs who sold it to me had two enormous copper cans full of it on their counter, and they emptied them in half an hour at the same price."
The robbers! Before the war, these quinces were left to ferment in hogsheads. Each hogshead gave a few pints of brandy at forty sous, and the pulp of the fruit was then thrown into the fire. It is not an augury of good times ahead!
We dine with an old Alsatian woman, a neat clean old woman, rosy and well preserved. She wears a bonnet, round and very white, so white that never before in the whole Meuse district have I seen one quite so chic and prepossessing. A doorway of bricks, newly washed, clean and as red as one's face after a wash in cold water; furniture which shines as does the top of the table covered with brown oilcloth. Above the sink a brass bracket reflects the light of our lamp and sends a pencil of light through the darkness.
"Cabbage soup!" announces Presle, "and after that we have roast fowl."
Oh! that roast fowl! A consumptive hen, a lamentable thing, lying on its back in the middle of an immense dish. To the head with its closed eyes was attached a body about as big as a fig, and the claws, which Presle had neglected to remove, were crisp, black and contracted as though in agony.
"It is certainly not a Bresse fowl," explains Presle in self-extenuation. "And, at the same time, I believe that her flirtations must have made a long-distance walker of her before I wrung her neck. All the same, it is fowl."
After dining, I inspect a collection of shoes which the cyclist has picked up, I know not where. It is difficult to make a selection: these are too broad, those are too long; some are already worn; others, which fit exactly and appear on first sight to be made of soft yet solid leather, unexpectedly reveal a long cut. At length I choose a pair with welted soles, newly clumped, of which the cyclist says:
"I guarantee them for six months without repair, Lieutenant. They will carry you to the end of the campaign, of that you can be certain."
"Amen!" I replied.