CHAPTER x x x 1 1

FEW things happened to break the monotony of
misfortune that hung over the Benedit household
as savings dwindled to vanishing point and could
thus no longer augment scanty earnings. Even the
war grew monotonous, so that at times it seemed to
Ghristophe that the world must always have been at
war, the streets always full of the mutilated, the
church always filled with black-clad figures who knelt
to pray for the souls of their dead — the women hiding
their tears beneath veils, the men dry-eyed and grim
in their stiff new mourning.
Scarcely anyone came to see Jouse these days, for
in spite of a genuine sympathy people were growing
used to his illness. And what was that illness of his,
after all, when compared with the scourge that was
decimating youth? The paralysis of an ageing man
had ceased to stir the imagination.
Eusebe would come and sit with his friend, but now
Eusebe was always complaining. He had rheumatism,
he declared, in his loins, the result of working among
his vineyards, and whenever he moved he gave a
deep groan, gripped his back and started cursing the
Germans. Jouse suspected that Eusebe was not quite
so suffering as he pretended, that the groans were in
order to get sympathy — although this was certainly
very unlike him. Indeed Jouse had begun to wonder
of late if this barefaced pagan sometimes felt lonely;
disregard of neighbours might be all very fine so long
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