"Yours leads by a minute," he said. "The advance will be at four o'clock. there will be hot coffee at three. Good luck."
He passed on, and the comrades drew a little closer together. The sergeant's words had made the Idiot very happy.
"In less than two hours!" he said.
"I thought there was something in the wind," said Paul Guitry.
"If we advanced only three kilometers," said the Idiot, "the village in which I was born would be French again. But there will be great changes."
"You were born at Champ-de-Fer?"
"It is directly opposite us."
"You cannot know that."
"I feel it," said the Idiot. "Wherever I have been stationed I have felt it. Sometimes I have asked an officer to look for Champ-de-Fer on his field map, and when he has done so, I have pointed, and said 'Is it in that direction?' and always I have been right."
"Did your family remain in the village?"