Sac-Au-Dos | Page 5

suffer. At last, at about nine o'clock in the
morning, appears a long train of mules with "cacolets,"{5} and led by
"tringlots."{6}
5 Panier seats used in the French army to transport the wounded.
6 Tringlots are the soldiers detailed for this duty.
We climb two by two into the baskets. Francis and I were lifted onto
the same mule, only, as the painter was very fat and I very lean, the
arrangement see-sawed; I go up in the air while he descends under the
belly of the mule, who, dragged by the head, and pushed from behind,
dances and flings about furiously. We trot along in a whirlwind of dust,
blinded, bewildered, jolted, we cling to the bar of the cacolet, shut our
eyes, laugh and groan. We arrive at Chalons more dead than alive; we
fall to the gravel like jaded cattle, then they pack us into the cars and
we leave Chalons to go--where? No one knows.
It is night; we fly over the rails. The sick are taken from the cars and
walked up and down the platforms. The engine whistles, slows down
and stops in a railway station--that of Reims, I suppose, but I can not be
sure. We are dying of hunger, the commissary forgot but one thing: to
give us bread for the journey. I get out. I see an open buffet, I run for it,
but others are there before me. They are fighting as I come up. Some
were seizing bottles, others meat, some bread, some cigars. Half-dazed
but furious, the restaurant-keeper defends his shop at the point of a spit.
Crowded by their comrades, who come up in gangs, the front row of
militia throw themselves onto the counter, which gives way, carrying in
its wake the owner of the buffet and his waiters. Then followed a
regular pillage; everything went, from matches to toothpicks.
Meanwhile the bell rings and the train starts. Not one of us disturbs
himself, and while sitting on the walk, I explain to the painter how the
tubes work, the mechanism of the bell. The train backs down over the

rails to take us aboard. We ascend into our compartments again and we
pass in review the booty we had seized. To tell the truth, there was little
variety of food. Pork-butcher's meat and nothing but pork-butcher's
meat! We had six strings of Bologna sausages flavored with garlic, a
scarlet tongue, two sausages, a superb slice of Italian sausage, a slice in
silver stripe, the meat all of an angry red, mottled white; four liters of
wine, a half-bottle of cognac, and a few candle ends. We stick the
candle ends into the neck of our flasks, which swing, hung by strings to
the sides of the wagon. There was, thus, when the train jolted over a
switch, a rain of hot grease which congealed almost instantly into great
platters, but our coats had seen many another.
We began our repast at once, interrupted by the going and coming of
those of the militia who kept running along the footboards the whole
length of the train, and knocked at our window-panes and demanded
something to drink. We sang at the top of our voices, we drank, we
clinked glasses. Never did sick men make so much noise or romp so on
a train in motion!
One would have said that it was a rolling Court of Miracles; the
cripples jumped with jointed legs, those whose intestines were burning
soaked them in bumpers of cognac, the one-eyed opened their eyes, the
fevered capered about, the sick throats bellowed and tippled; it was
unheard of!
This disturbance ends in calming itself. I profit by the lull to put my
nose out of the window. There was not a star there, not even a tip of the
moon; heaven and earth seem to make but one, and in that intensity of
inky blackness, the lanterns winked like eyes of different colors
attached to the metal of the disks. The engineer discharged his whistle,
the engine puffed and vomited its sparks without rest. I reclose the
window and look at my companions. Some were snoring, others
disturbed by the jolting of the box, gurgled and swore in their sleep,
turning over incessantly, searching for room to stretch their legs, to
brace their heads that nodded at every jolt.
By dint of looking at them, I was beginning to get sleepy when the train
stopped short and woke me up. We were at a station; and the

station-master's office flamed like a forge fire in the darkness of the
night. I had one leg numbed, I was shivering from cold, I descend to
warm up a bit. I walk up and down the platform, I go to look at the
engine, which