Photographs of soubrettes
and dancers with their painted mouths smiled from the shiny cardboard,
enlivening the chaste aspect of the redoubt.
Don Marcelo was growing more and more impatient at seeing so many
hundreds of men, but no Julio. The senator, complying with his imploring
glance, spoke a few words to the chief preceding him with an aspect of
great deference. The official had at first to think very hard to
recall Julio to mind, but he soon remembered the exploits of Sergeant
Desnoyers. "An excellent soldier," he said. "He will be sent for
immediately, Senator Lacour. . . . He is on duty now with his section in
the first line trenches."
The father, in his anxiety to see him, proposed that they betake
themselves to that advanced site, but his petition made the Chief and
the others smile. Those open trenches within a hundred or fifty yards
from the enemy, with no other defence but barbed wire and sacks of
earth, were not for the visits of civilians. They were always filled
with mud; the visitors would have to crawl around exposed to bullets and
under the dropping chunks of earth loosened by the shells. None but the
combatants could get around in these outposts.
"It is always dangerous there," said the Chief. "There is always random
shooting. . . . Just listen to the firing!"
Desnoyers indeed perceived a distant crackling that he had not noted
before, and he felt an added anguish at the thought that his son must be
in the thick of it.
Pages:
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552