It is quite a business to get rid of these wrappings, for my straw is now mere chaff, and Bertrand, doubly soft as a betrothed lover and as a Phocæan, has a nose extremely sensitive to dust. Still recumbent, by means of slow contortions from right to left I unswaddle the upper part of my body. Then, sitting with my back against the wall, I take off my nightcap—my ancient nightcap, thoroughly impregnated with the dirt of Lorraine and of Bavaria, as dirty as Queen Isabel’s shift. (I sleep with it pulled well down over the ears, to protect my head from the chaff.) At length I rise to my feet. The second wrapping, which confines the lower extremities, makes me look like a man about to take part in a sack race. I untie it at the hips. It falls to the ground like a skirt. Now I am dressed. I fold up my two rugs with infinite precaution and put them on the top of my knapsack. Seated on this improvised stool, I take off my night slippers and put on my heavy military boots, delightfully supple since Devèse, the cook-butcher, anointed them for me with a wonderful preparation of beef marrow. Emptying my képi of watch, pipe, tobacco, pipe-lighter, pocket-knife, purse, and handkerchief (the huge regulation handkerchief), I stuff all these things into the pockets of my trousers. It is done. Guido has not stirred; he dreams misanthropically. Bertrand has not sneezed; he dreams amorously. With catlike stealth, képi on head, coat tucked beneath my arm, and shouldering my two haversacks, respectively containing my papers and the small articles of my kit, I hasten to the kitchen. To my great surprise I find the place lighted up.
That villain Marie, pipe in mouth, sticky, greasy, smeared with blacks, alert as a fox-terrier just let out for a run, is rummaging in his stoves. While I was still dreaming he had shaken up from their slumbers two others: Lambert, most devoted of men, my good little Lambert; and a famished specimen from the 6th corps, by trade a charcoal-burner in the forest of Argonne, who would cut up an oak for you in return for a piece of rancid bacon rind. Yesterday evening there was not a scrap of wood in the kitchen. Dutrex “rowed” the cooks about it. But Marie, the wiliest of all the Normans in Normandy, rose by moonlight. Where can he have been? How, knowing not a word of German beyond _nichts_ and _ja_, did he manage to circumvent the guard? Anyhow, axe in hand, Lambert and the charcoal-burner are vigorously and noisily attacking logs of pine. I am surprised. These logs have a strong resemblance to the timber-shores of the outer ditches. What has he been up to, this Marie!