The two men stood staring at each other in the rain.
Despite the chill and melancholy dawn, with its darkly reddening skies, Fandor felt he was on the very verge of bursting into wild laughter.
"Let us see your route instructions," quoth the constable.
Corporal Vinson-Fandor showed his paper.
"That's it!" cried the constable triumphantly. "You are down to report yourself at the Saint Benoit barracks. You're in luck, my lad! It's only fifty yards or so from here!... Go down the road, and you will see the barrack wall on the left. The entrance is in the middle."
Fandor saluted the friendly constable, hurried off, and reached the Saint Benoit gate in a few minutes.
"The 257th?" he asked the sentry.
"Here!... You will find the sergeant in the guard-room."
Fandor entered a smoke-filled room; several soldiers were stretched at full length on a bench, slumbering: a snoring non-commissioned officer was lying on three straw bottomed chairs close to a stove.
At Fandor's entrance he was wide awake in a moment: he swore: it was the sergeant.