'A young soldier, a conscript, a chasseur à cheval, has lost two cartridges as the battalion is about to leave for Tunis.
'The Corporal informs the Captain in command, who turns and looks in silence. The boy Loupat gazes at him with the eyes of an animal watching the descent of the club which is about to brain it, and from which it knows not how to escape.
'In passing through Tunis the Corporal says to him, "We shall leave you here. That will teach you to sell your cartridges."
'The boy understands. The council of war, the sentence as a thief, the indelible shame stamped on the brow of a youth because he has lost two of the cartridges of the State! The following morning the bugle sounds the _réveil_ at four o'clock. It is still dark. At twenty minutes to five the company, with knapsacks on their backs, is drawn up in line on the road which runs through the camp. The trumpets sound the roll-call, and all down the line each man answers "Present" as his name is spoken.
'"The scoundrel! He has slunk off in the night to escape court-martial, but we will find him. Go on. No one else missing?"
'"Look there!" A soldier points to the gymnasium. All the men look where he points. Under the portico, on the great architrave on the left, a body is swinging, black, at the end of a cord.
'A lieutenant runs to the place, climbs to the body takes hold of it, lets it go, returns.
'"Dead?" says the officer in command. "Is it Loupat?"
'"The scoundrel!" says the Captain again. "Well! he has done justice on himself. Right flank, march!"
'We are crowded pell-mell into the railway waggons which are bound for Tunis. I look through the opening in the door and see far away below me--already far away--a small dark shape which swings in the wind as on a gibbet, and which is lighted solely by the first rays of the rising sun.
'Another soldier, Barnaux, has had some liqueurs given him by a comrade; Barnaux is drinking with the men of his _marabout_, when a sergeant enters, espies the irregularity, takes the offender before the officer in command.
'Barnaux refuses to say who the giver of the liqueur was. The Captain orders him to be put in irons. They have put him _à la crapaudine_, that is, with his arms bound behind him and chained to his ankles. He is cast down thus on the sand of the camp. Because he moans with pain they gag him with a dirty rag, they tie his chin to his head with a cord. He remains all the night thus, tied up into a shapeless packet. In the morning when they change sentinels they perceive that he is dead. The gag has stifled him.