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　　CHAPTER V

　　Into a small estaminet at the end of the rue des Trois Cailloux, beyond the Hotel de Ville, came one day during the battles of the Somme two poilus, grizzled, heavy men, deeply bronzed, with white dust in their wrinkles, and the earth of the battlefields ingrained in the skin of their big, coarse hands. They ordered two “little glasses” and drank them at one gulp. Then two more.

　　“See what I have got, my little cabbage,” said one of them, stooping to the heavy pack which he had shifted from his shoulders to the other seat beside him. “It is something to make you laugh.”

　　“And what is that, my old one?” said a woman sitting on the other side of the marble-topped table, with another woman of her own class, from the market nearby.

　　The man did not answer the question, but fumbled into his pack, laughing a little in a self-satisfied way.

　　“I killed a German to get it,” he said. “He was a pig of an officer, a dirty Boche. Very chic, too, and young like a schoolboy.”

　　One of the women patted him on the shoulder. Her eyes glistened.

　　“Did you slit his throat, the dirty dog? Eh, I'd like to get my fingers round the neck of a dirty Boche!”

　　“I finished him with a grenade,” said the poilu. “It was good enough. It knocked a hole in him as large as a cemetery. See then, my cabbage. It will make you smile. It is a funny kind of mascot, eh?”

　　He put on the table a small leather pouch stained with a blotch of reddish brown. His big, clumsy fingers could hardly undo the little clasp.

　　“He wore this next his heart,” said the man. “Perhaps he thought it would bring him luck. But I killed him all the same! 'Cre nom de Dieu!”

　　He undid the clasp, and his big fingers poked inside the flap of the pouch.

　　“It was from his woman, his German grue. Perhaps even now she doesn't know he's dead. She thinks of him wearing this next to his heart. 'Cre nom de Dieu! It was I that killed him a week ago!”

　　He held up something in his hand, and the light through the estaminet window gleamed on it. It was a woman's lock of hair, like fine-spun gold.

　　The two women gave a shrill cry of surprise, and then screamed with laughter. One of them tried to grab the hair, but the poilu held it high, beyond her reach, with a gruff command of, “Hands off!” Other soldiers and women in the estaminet gathered round staring at the yellow tress, laughing, making ribald conjectures as to the character of the woman from whose head it had come. They agreed that she was fat and ugly, like all German women, and a foul slut.

　　“She'll never kiss that fellow again,” said one man. “Our old one has cut the throat of that pig of a Boche!”

　　“I'd like to cut off all her hair and tear the clothes off her back,” said one of the women. “The dirty drab with yellow hair! They ought to be killed, every one of them, so that the human race should by rid of them!”

　　“Her lover is a bit of clay, anyhow,” said the other woman. “A bit of dirt, as our poilus will do for all of them.”

　　The soldier with the woman's hair in his hand stroked it across his forefinger.

　　“All the same it is pretty. Like gold, eh? I think of the woman, sometimes. With blue eyes, like a German girl I kissed in Paris-a dancing-girl!”

　　There was a howl of laughter from the two women.

　　“The old one is drunk. He is amorous with the German cow!”

　　“I will keep it as a mascot,” said the poilu, scrunching it up and thrusting it into his pouch. “It'll keep me in mind of that saligaud of a German officer I killed. He was a chic fellow, tout de meme. A boy.” Now It Can Be Told