"Oh, crickey! he says he can't see them! Open your garret windows,
stupid! See! there's one--see! there's another. Didn't you see that
one? It was of the most beautiful green."

And Lapoulle rolled his eyes and stared, placing his finger before his
nose, while Pache fingered the scapular he wore and wished it was
large enough to shield his entire person.

Rochas, who had remained on his feet, spoke up and said jocosely:

"Children, there is no objection to your ducking to the shells when
you see them coming. As for the bullets, it is useless; they are too
numerous!"

At that very instant a soldier in the front rank was struck on the
head by a fragment of an exploding shell. There was no outcry; simply
a spurt of blood and brain, and all was over.

"Poor devil!" tranquilly said Sergeant Sapin, who was quite cool and
exceedingly pale. "Next!"

But the uproar had by this time become so deafening that the men could
no longer hear one another's voice; Maurice's nerves, in particular,
suffered from the infernal _charivari_. The neighboring battery was
banging away as fast as the gunners could load the pieces; the
continuous roar seemed to shake the ground, and the mitrailleuses were
even more intolerable with their rasping, grating, grunting noise.
Were they to remain forever reclining there among the cabbages? There
was nothing to be seen, nothing to be learned; no one had any idea how
the battle was going. And _was_ it a battle, after all--a genuine