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it now! Sure! . . . think of the stories they tell nowadays about the Gauls, Louis XIV, even Félix Faute! . . . the defeated are always scum! . . . I know it . . . I know it well . . .

In the old chronicles wars are called by a different name: the travels of the nations ° . . . the term is still perfectly apt, in June 1940, for instance, the French people and the French Army simply traveled from Berg-op-Zoom to the Pyrenees . . . people and armies with the shit coming out of their asses . . . in the Pyrenees they all got together again . . . Fritzes and French! . . . fought no more, drank, sat down, fell asleep . . . journey ended! . . . and I bring you back to Baden-Baden . . . disorder, the bric-a-brac of ideas! . . . why had I left Montmartre? fear of being torn limb from limb on Avenue Junot four years later . . . ah, what inglorious confessions! All my friends and relatives expected me to be skinned alive, every last one of them waiting to dash in and walk off with my furniture, divide up my sheets, and sell the rest. . . Which, Od's blood, is exactly what they did! No comeback, I'd asked for it . . . I'd crucified myself for those people! . . . sweet Jesus is dying every day ten thousand years later! . . . a lesson that hasn't been wasted on everybody! Look at the highways: all those motorized floozies, full of caviar, diamonds, vacations . . . not a fart's worth of self-sacrifice!
    The French Army, while we're on the subject, did its galloping diarrhea from Berg-op-Zoom to Bayonne in 1940 . . . we, Lili, me, Bébert, and Le Vigan ° in '44 . . . from rue Girar-don to Baden-Baden . . . to each his shitless epic! Condemned to death, little Tintin ° hopped a plane for Lourdes to save his honor and skin . . . I'm not going to regale you with "parallel lives" . . . Tintin's one thing I'm another . . . his chronicle "brought in billions! . . . mine, you can imagine, a couple of hundred francs . . . Tintin's statues are all over the place, they won't dare to engrave my name on my tomb . . . take my mother in Père-Lachaise, they've purged her tomb, rubbed out our name . . . that's what comes of not running to the right place at the right time . . . in La Rochelle I had to resist the French Army that wanted to buy my ambulance! It wasn't mine! me, the soul of honesty, nobody can buy anything from mel the ambulance belonged to my dispensary in Sartrouville . . . you can imagine . . . I took the lousy bus back where it came from! and the two grandmothers, my passengers, with their bottles of wine, and three newborn babies . . . the whole shebang in perfect condition! Did anybody show me the slightest gratitude? Hell no! Abominations, that's all I got . . . enough to fill a penitentiary! Twenty Landrus, Petiots, ° and Fualdèses! ". . . if I'd sold the ambulance for the price they offered me, with the babies, nurses, and old women, I'd be a hero of the Resistance today, with a statue as big as a house! Once the hue and cry starts up, ah my forefathers! . . . there's not a crime you haven't, committed! you're not sticking that neck out far enough . . . how do you expect them to slice your lousy carotids?. . . coward! . . . shout the millions in the grandstand! . . . and all because of my pretentious pride, wanting to bring that jalopy back where it came from! . . . because it belonged in Sartrouville! vanity! . . . if I'd let the Fritzes have it or the Franzouskis or the Fifis, anybody, if I'd left it at the public baths, they all wanted to buy it, grandmothers, nurses, babies, and all! I'd be a happy and respected man of property, not an old tramp in the shit . . .
    A slight consolation perhaps, every morning in the Figaro the obits, the departures . . . "in his château of Aulnoy-les-Topines Grand Commander Chickenbelly has bought his ticket . . . Before calling on the notary the bereaved family wishes to thank you . . . for your affectionate condolences . . . etc . . . "
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