And the greatness of this silence, this despotic and oppressive motion, irritated Adjutant Marcassin, who would have liked to see some animation.

He rated and lashed us with a vengeance.

He hustled the file in the narrowness of the trench as he clove to the corners so as to survey his charge.

But then he had no knapsack.
Through the heavy distant noise of our tramping, through the funereal consolation of our drowsiness, we heard the adjutant's ringing voice, violently reprimanding this or the other.

"Where have you seen, swine, that there can be patriotism without hatred?
Do you think one can love his own country if he doesn't hate the others ?" When some one spoke banteringly of militarism--for no one, except Termite, who didn't count, took the word seriously--Marcassin growled despairingly, "French militarism and Prussian militarism, they're not the same thing, for one's French and the other's Prussian!" But we felt that all these wrangles only shocked and wearied him.