“A nothing! A mere touch!... Monsieur was momentarily startled by the passage of the monster. For months those expresses from Boulogne have been thundering through here. Full—as Monsieur saw—of soldiers, French soldiers at the beginning.... Regiments of the Line from Helfaut, batteries of Artillery from Lille, and St. Omer, and other fortresses; then English, English, nothing but Englishmen.... Via Paris for Marseilles and Toulon, to be shipped for the Bosphorus and the Black Sea.”
The prattle of the newspaper stall-keeper had never before been listened to so greedily as by this white-haired, haggard, shabbily-clothed traveler. The little man went on, plainly reveling in the sound of his own queer voice:
“They were fine men at first, some of them giants. Now they are boys—mere infants, one might say!... Conscripts, one might say also; but that they are without the conscription in England. Food for the Hungry One all the same. For Death is a glutton, Monsieur, not a gourmet. All he asks is—enough to eat.”
He added with his whinnying laugh:
“And he gets enough. For of all those train-loads of British that have rolled through here since January, not one has come back, Monsieur.... Possibly there have been returns by sea, but by this route we have seen none of them. We have French invalids in incredible numbers, en route for the Northern military hospitals and convalescent camps. They are not beautiful to see, those men who are recovering from fever, and dysentery, and cholera; and”—he wrinkled his nose expressively—“they are excessively unpleasant to smell! But—with the exception of the bodies of wealthy officers, who have died out there and are being forwarded, embalmed, for interment in their family mausoleums—as I have said, Monsieur—there are no English at all. With regard to these last, my peculiar humor, in connection with my trade of bookseller, has suggested a little pleasantry.... They went out to the East in cloth, gilt—and they return in plain boards! Monsieur will pardon my humor? Occasionally one must laugh at Death, who laughs as no else can!”
The haggard black eyes of the white-haired traveler had never quitted the face of the speaker. The hunchback gave another irrepressible little skip, and went on:
“Seriously though, Monsieur, it is incredible what a fatality has dogged the footsteps of these English. From the moment of disembarkation at Varna, new misfortunes, fresh calamities, have fallen on them every day. I ask myself why, and there is no answer but one! They are brave, but stupid, these sons of foggy Albion! And yet there are two great secrets they have mastered perfectly. How to fight, Monsieur—and how to die!”
“Go on,” urged Dunoisse, with feverish eagerness. “Tell me more—tell me everything you know!”
“Assuredly!” cried the hunchback, smiling widely. “But where,” he added, with irrepressible curiosity, “has Monsieur buried himself all these months that he is ignorant of what the whole world knows? I have not a single paper left to sell, if Monsieur would give me ten francs for it, But I possess a memory and a gift of eloquence. Listen, then, Monsieur!”
He gave another little goatlike skip upon the asphalt, and went on eagerly, fearing to be interrupted; pouring out words, weaving an invisible web about him by the rapid gestures of his supple, bony hands. And Dunoisse realized, as the grim recital continued, in how far his own deep-laid schemes had been successful; and in what respects they had been set at nought by the grim Power that men call Destiny. With incredible fatuity or appalling dishonesty, those officials who controlled the Commissariat and Transport Departments of the British Eastern Expedition had poured out the troops of England upon a foreign soil without clothing, provisions, forage, or beasts of burden sufficient to supply, support, and transport an army of twenty-eight thousand men. They had relied almost exclusively upon the resources of the country. Thanks to a well-laid plan, the country had been found without resources: the Allies had been condemned to a stagnant immobility, as injurious to discipline as dangerous to health.