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By Root 4627 0

of windless and weightless snow or feathers about the golden hat, the calm incurious inscrutable face which had looked at everything and believed none of it. 'You lie,' the man shouted again. 'My name is not Pierre Bouc. I am Piotr-' adding something in a harsh almost musical Middle-Eastern tongue so full of consonants as to be almost unintelligible. Then he turned to the corporal, going rapidly onto his knees, grasping the corporal's hand and saying something else in the incomprehensible tongue, to which the corporal answered in it though the man still crouched, clinging to the corporal's hand, the corporal speaking again in the tongue, as if he had repeated himself but with a different object, noun perhaps, and then a third time, a third slight alteration in its inflection, at which the man moved, rose and stood now rigid at attention facing the corporal, who spoke again, and the man turned, a smart military quarter-turn, the four captors moving quickly in again until the corporal said in French: 'You dont need to hold him. Just unlock the gate.' But still the old general didn't move, motionless within the cloak's dark vol-ume, composed, calm, not even bemused; just inscrutable, saying presently in that voice not even recapitulant: not anything: ' "Forgive me, I didn't know what I was doing." And you said, "Be a man," but he didn't move. Then you said "Be a Zsettlani" and still no move. Then you said "Be a soldier" and he became one.' Then he turned and got back into the car, the soft volumi-nous smother of the coat becoming motionless again about him in the corner of the seat; the sergeant came rapidly back across the pavement and stood again just behind the corporal's shoulder; now the old general himself spoke in the rapid unvoweled tongue: 'And became one. No: returned to one. Good night, my child,'

'Good-bye, Father,' the corporal answered him.

'Not good-bye,' the old general said. 'I am durable too; I dont give up easily either. Remember whose blood it is that you defy me with.' Then in French to the driver: 'Let us go home now,' The car went on. Then the corporal and the sergeant turned together, the sergeant once more at and just behind his shoulder, not touching him, back to the iron gate which one of the sentries held open for them to pass through, and then closed and locked. Again, so grooved in old assumption, he had begun to turn down Thursday Night the corridor toward the cell when the sergeant once more checked and turned him, this time into a passage only wide enough for one and barely tall enough for any-a one-way secret duct leading as though into the very bowels of incarceration; the sergeant unlocked a solid door and closed it between himself and the corporal upon a cell indeed this time little larger than a big closet containing one endless man-width wooden bench for sleeping and an iron bucket for latrine and two men, all bathed in one fierce glare of light. One of them did have the swaggering face, reckless and sardonic, incorrigible and debonair, even to the thin moustache; he even wore the filthy beret and the knotted handkerchief about his throat, even the limp dead cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets and one foot crossed negligently over the other as he had leaned against the wall of his narrow Mon'I'martre alley, the other shorter man standing beside him with the peaceful and patient fidelity of a blind dog-a squat simian-like man whose tremendous empty and peaceful hands hung almost to his knees as if they were attached to strings inside his sleeves, with a small quite round simian head and a doughy face itself like one single feature, drooling a little at the mouth.

Tray to enter,' the first said. 'So they tapped you for it, did they? Call me Lapin; anybody in the Prefecture will vouch for it.' Without removing his hand from the pocket, he indicated the man beside him with a nudge of his elbow. 'This is Casse-téte-Horse for short. We're on our way to town, hey, Horse?' The second man made a single indistinguishable sound. 'Hear that?' the first said. 'He can say