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snapped.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Valette asked, intrigued.
    â€œNothing’s the matter. Just a button…”
    Valette smelled a rat in Lasteyrie’s comings and goings. Two soldiers who have become friends understand each other intuitively. So Valette went and waited outside the toilets at the end of the carriage where Lasteyrie was busy, and picked him up as he came out with his cloak over his arm and sergeant’s pips sewn onto his jacket sleeve.
    Valette grinned broadly while Lasteyrie moodily repeated, “You’re a fine Laughing Cow, Laughing Cow!” (That was Valette’s nickname.) “Bugger off, you soft cheese,” and so on. And he put on his cape with a swagger.
    â€œReporting for duty, Sergeant!” Valette said, clicking his heels.
    Lasteyrie threw him a punch, and the two soldiers scrapped and wrestled in the juddering vestibule between the two carriages.
    â€œSo what’s the game?” Valette said as he got the better of Lasteyrie. “Is it for the bird you’ll pick up tonight? She won’t be difficult to get…” And he pulled Lasteyrie’s mustache.
    â€œIt’s for my father,” Lasteyrie said, with a shrug. “He doesn’t know I got demoted … He’ll go on and on about it. About my getting into trouble wherever I go, being a useless individual, and so on and so forth … You don’t know what he’s like.”
    â€œDon’t tell the prof,” he added on the way back to the compartment. “He’ll only poke more fun at me…”
    Meanwhile, the train had reached the outer suburbs. There were factories, warehouses, reservoirs, and even small groups of apartment houses with ground-floor cafés, looking very Parisian.
    â€œHere we are! That’s Paname!” Valette shouted, using the Parisians’ pet name for the city. He leaned forward and shook Lachaume, repeating: “Paname! Paname!”
    â€œCalm down,” Lachaume said. “How long till we get in?” And as there were still fifteen minutes to go, he wanted to lie down again, but this time Valette made him get up and come and stand alongside him and Lasteyrie at an open window in the corridor.
    â€œJust look!” Valette said to him. “We’re home, we’re back … Boy, have I been waiting for this!…” He had tears in his eyes, and he put his arm out the window to wave at passersby in the streets and at the workmen on the other track, and at a thousand suburban windows with washing hanging out, which sometimes responded to his greeting. “Hey, see that? A metro station!”
    â€œAnd when you think we’re not even entitled to free rides on the metro…” Lasteyrie said.
    In a clatter of screeching points the train slowly drew into the station. Well before it halted, Valette and Lasteyrie were perched on the running board with their kit bags on their shoulders so as to be the first to jump off. Then they ran for the exit. The last man through the turnstile had to buy the first round. They’d agreed on that ages ago.
    But Lachaume, who was taking his time and walking as if in a dream, saw his two companions in some kind of argument with an MP patrol, whose chief was checking their leave papers. That made him furious, so he speeded up, swinging his free arm and with a scowl on his face.
    â€œWhat did those idiots want?” he yelled as he caught up with his buddies.
    â€œApparently we’re lacking in decorum,” Lasteyrie said. “Running is not allowed this side of the Med.”
    They came out of Gare de Lyon, down a few steps, and took their first, wary dip in the ocean of Paris. Soon they were in a café in a state of silent wonderment. Paris seeped into them through their eyes and ears. They were fascinated by the street and stood with their backs to the bar, not hearing the waiter asking them for the third time what they wanted to