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they called Janvier—and the chances were once again the same as when the draw started. Some men drew the first slip which touched their fingers: others seemed to suspect that fate was trying to force on them a particular slip and when they had drawn one a little way from the shoe would let it drop again and choose another. Time passed with incredible slowness, and the man called Voisin sat against the wall with the unlighted cigarette in his mouth paying them no attention at all.
    The chances had narrowed to one in eight when the elderly clerk—his name was Lenôtre—drew the second slip. He cleared his throat and put on his pince-nez as though he had to make sure he was not mistaken. ‘Ah, Monsieur Voisin,’ he said with a thin undecided smile, ‘may I join you?’ This time Chavel felt no joy even though the elusive odds were back again overwhelmingly in his favour at fifteen to one: he was daunted by the courage of common men. He wanted the whole thing to be over as quickly as possible: like a game of cards which has gone on too long, he only wanted someone to make a move and break up the table. Lenôtre, sitting down against the wall next to Voisin, turned the slip over: on the back was a scrap of writing.
    ‘Your wife?’ Voisin said.
    ‘My daughter,’ Lenôtre said. ‘Excuse me.’ He went over to his roll of bedding and drew out a writing pad. Then he sat down next to Voisin and began to write, carefully, without hurry, a thin legible hand. The odds were back to ten to one.
    From that point the odds seemed to move towards Chavel with a dreadful inevitability: nine to one, eight to one: they were like a pointing finger. The men who were left drew more quickly and more carelessly: they seemed to Chavel to have some inner information—to know that he was the one. When his time came to draw there were only three slips left, and it appeared to Chavel a monstrous injustice that there were so few choices left for him. He drew one out of the shoe and then feeling certain that this one had been willed on him by his companions and contained the pencilled cross he threw it back and snatched another.
    ‘You looked, lawyer,’ one of the two men exclaimed, but the other quieted him.
    ‘He didn’t look. He’s got the marked one now.’

4
    LENÔTRE SAID, ‘COME over here, Monsieur Chavel, and sit down with us.’ It was as if he were inviting Chavel to come up higher, to the best table at a public dinner.
    ‘No,’ Chavel said, ‘no.’ He threw the slip upon the ground and cried, ‘I never consented to the draw. You can’t
make
me die for the rest of you …’
    They watched him with astonishment but without enmity. He was a gentleman. They didn’t judge him by their own standards: he belonged to an unaccountable class and they didn’t at first even attach the idea of cowardice to his actions.
    Krogh said, ‘Sit down and rest. There’s nothing to worry about any more.’
    ‘You can’t,’ Chavel said. ‘It’s nonsense. The Germans won’t accept me. I’m a man of property.’
    Lenôtre said, ‘Don’t take on now, Monsieur Chavel. If it’s not this time it’s another …’
    ‘You can’t make me,’ Chavel repeated.
    ‘It’s not we who’ll make you,’ Krogh said.
    ‘Listen,’ Chavel implored them. He held out the slip of paper and they all watched him with compassionate curiosity. ‘I’ll give a hundred thousand francs to anyone who’ll take this.’
    He was beside himself: almost literally beside himself. It was as if some hidden calmness in him stood apart and heard his absurd proposition and watched his body take up shameful attitudes of fear and pleading. It was as if the calm Chavel whispered with ironic amusement, ‘A grand show. Lay it on a bit thicker. You ought to have been an actor, old man. You never know. It’s a chance.’
    He took little rapid steps from one man to another, showing each man the bit of paper as if he were an attendant at an auction. ‘A hundred thousand