THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS

From the French of GEORGES DUHAMEL

BY FLORENCE SIMMONDS

CONTENTS

 THROUGHOUT OUR LAND THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS THE DEATH OF MERCIER VERDUN THE SACRIFICE THE THIRD SYMPHONY GRACE NIGHTS IN ARTOIS

THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS

THROUGHOUT OUR LAND

From the disfigured regions where the cannon reigns supreme, to themountains of the South, to the ocean, to the glittering shores of theinland sea, the cry of wounded men echoes throughout the land, and avast kindred cry seems to rise responsive from the whole world. 

There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on thebattle-field are not bleeding. Not one which has not accepted the dutyof assuaging something of the sum of suffering, just as it bears itspart in the sum of mourning; not one which may not hear within its ownwalls an echo of the greater lamentation swelling and muttering wherethe conflict seems to rage unceasingly. The waves of war break upon thewhole surface of the country, and like the incoming tide, strew it withwreckage. 

In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side, stricken men await the verdict of fate. The beds are white, thebandages are spotless; many faces smile until the hour when they areflushed with fever, and until that same fever makes a whole nation ofwounded tremble on the Continent. 

Some one who had been visiting the wounded said to me: "The beds arereally very white, the dressings are clean, all the patients seem to beplaying cards, reading the papers, eating dainties; they are simple, often very gentle, they don't look very unhappy. They all tell the samestory . . . The war has not changed them much. One can recognise themall. "

Are you sure that you recognise them? You have just been looking atthem, are you sure that you have seen them?

Under their bandages are wounds you cannot imagine. Below the wounds, in the depths of the mutilated flesh, a soul, strange and furtive, isstirring in feverish exaltation, a soul which does not readily revealitself, which expresses itself artlessly, but which I would fain makeyou understand. 

In these days, when nothing retains its former semblance, all these menare no longer those you so lately knew. Suffering has roused them fromthe sleep of gentle life, and every day fills them with a terribleintoxication. They are now something more than themselves; those weloved were merely happy shadows. 

Let us lose none of their humble words, let us note their slightestgestures, and tell me, tell me that we will think of them together, nowand later, when we realise the misery of the times and the magnitude oftheir sacrifice. 

THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU

They came in like two parcels dispatched by the same post, two clumsy, squalid parcels, badly packed, and damaged in transit. Two human formsrolled up in linens and woollens, strapped into strange instruments, one of which enclosed the whole man, like a coffin of zinc and wire. 

They seemed to be of no particular age; or rather, each might have beena thousand and more, the age of swaddled mummies in the depths ofsarcophagi. 

We washed, combed, and peeled them, and laid them very cautiouslybetween clean sheets; then we found that one had the look of an oldman, and that the other was still a boy. 

Their beds face each other in the same grey room. All who enter itnotice them at once; their infinite misery gives them an air ofkinship. Compared with them, the other wounded seem well and happy. Andin this abode of suffering, they are kings; their couches are encircledby the respect and silence due to majesty. 

I approach the younger man and bend over him. 

"What is your name?"

The answer is a murmur accompanied by an imploring look. What I hearsounds like: Mahihehondo. It is a sigh with modulations. 

It takes me a week to discover that the boyish patient is called MarieLerondeau. 

The bed opposite is less confused. I see a little toothless head. Fromout the ragged beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone, buttouching and almost melodious. The man who lies there is called Carre. 

They did not come from the same battlefield, but they were hit almostat the same time, and they have the same wound. Each has a fracturedthigh. Chance brought them together in the same distant ambulance, where their wounds festered side by side. Since then they have kepttogether, till now they lie enfolded by the blue radiance of theMaster's gaze. 

He looks at both, and shakes his head silently; truly, a bad business!He can but ask himself which of the two will die first, so great arethe odds against the survival of either. 

The white-bearded man considers them in silence, turning in his handthe cunning knife. 

We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul mustwithdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide theflesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely. 

So the two comrades go to sleep, in that dreadful slumber wherein eachman resembles his own corpse. Henceforth we enter upon the struggle. Wehave laid our grasp upon these two bodies; we shall not let them besnatched from us easily. 

The nausea of the awakening, the sharp agony of the first hours areover, and I begin to discover my new friends. 

This requires time and patience. The dressing hour is propitious. Theman lies naked on the table. One sees him as a whole, as also thosegreat gaping wounds, the objects of so many hopes and fears. 

The afternoon is no less favourable to communion, but that is anothermatter. Calm has come to them, and these two creatures have ceased tobe nothing but a tortured leg and a screaming mouth. 

Carre went ahead at once. He made a veritable bound. Whereas Lerondeauseemed still wrapped in a kind of plaintive stupor, Carre was alreadyenfolding me in a deep affectionate gaze. He said:

"You must do all that is necessary. "

Lerondeau can as yet only murmur a half articulate phrase:

"Mustn't hurt me. "

As soon as I could distinguish and understand the boy's words, I calledhim by his Christian name. I would say:

"How are you, Marie?" or "I am pleased with you, Marie. "

This familiarity suits him, as does my use of "thee" and "thou" intalking to him. He very soon guessed that I speak thus only to thosewho suffer most, and for whom I have a special tenderness. So I say tohim: "Marie, the wound looks very well today. " And every one in thehospital calls him Marie as I do. 

When he is not behaving well, I say:

"Come, be sensible, Lerondeau. "

His eyes fill with tears at once. One day I was obliged to try"Monsieur Lerondeau, " and he was so hurt that I had to retract on thespot. However, he now refrains from grumbling at his orderly, andscreaming too loudly during the dressing of his wound, for he knowsthat the day I say to him "Be quiet, Monsiuer"--just Monsiuer--ourrelations will be exceedingly strained. 

From the first, Carre bore himself like a man. When I entered thedressing ward, I found the two lying side by side on stretchers whichhad been placed on the floor. Carre's emaciated arm emerged from underhis blanket, and he began to lecture Marie on the subject of hope andcourage. . . . I listened to the quavering voice, I looked at thetoothless face, lit up by a smile, and I felt a curious choking in mythroat, while Lerondeau blinked like a child who is being scolded. ThenI went out of the room, because this was a matter between those twolying on the ground, and had nothing to do with me, a robust person, standing on my feet. 

Since then, Carre has proved that he had a right to preach courage toyoung Lerondeau. 

While the dressing is being prepared, he lies on the ground with theothers, waiting his turn, and says very little. He looks gravely roundhim, and smiles when his eyes meet mine. He is not proud, but he is notone of those who are ready to chatter to every one. One does not comeinto this ward to talk, but to suffer, and Carre is bracing himself tosuffer as decently as possible. 

When he is not quite sure of himself, he warns me, saying:

"I am not as strong as usual to-day. "

Nine times, out of ten, he is "as strong as usual, " but he is so thin, so wasted, so reduced by his mighty task, that he is sometimes obligedto beat a retreat. He does it with honour, with dignity. He has justsaid: "My knee is terribly painful, " and the sentence almost ends in ascream. Then, feeling that he is about to howl like the others, Carrebegins to sing. 

The first time this happened I did not quite understand what was goingon. He repeated the one phrase again and again: "Oh, the pain in myknee!" And gradually I became aware that this lament was becoming areal melody, and for five long minutes Carre improvised a terrible, wonderful, heart-rending song on "the pain in his knee. " Since thenthis has become a habit, and he begins to sing suddenly as soon as hefeels that he can no longer keep silence. 

Among his improvisations he will introduce old airs. I prefer not tolook at his face when he begins: "Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre. "Indeed, I have a good excuse for not looking at it, for I am very busywith his poor leg, which gives me much anxiety, and has to be handledwith infinite precautions. 

I do "all that is necessary, " introducing the burning tincture ofiodine several times. Carre feels the sting; and when, passing by hiscorner an hour later, I listen for a moment, I hear him slowly chantingin a trembling but melodious voice the theme: "He gave me tincture ofiodine. "

Carre is proud of showing courage. 

This morning he seemed so weak that I tried to be as quick as possibleand to keep my ears shut. But presently a stranger came into the ward. Carre turned his head slightly, saw the visitor, and frowning, began tosing:

"Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre. "

The stranger looked at him with tears in his eyes but the more helooked, the more resolutely Carre smiled, clutching the edges of thetable with his two quivering hands. 

Lerondeau has good strong teeth. Carre has nothing but black stumps. This distresses me, for a man with a fractured thigh needs good teeth. 

Lerondeau is still at death's door, but though moribund, he can eat. Heattacks his meat with a well-armed jaw; he bites with animal energy, and seems to fasten upon anything substantial. 

Carre, for his part, is well-inclined to eat; but what can he do withhis old stumps?

"Besides, " he says, "I was never very carnivorous. "

Accordingly, he prefers to smoke. In view of lying perpetually upon hisback, he arranged the cover of a cardboard box upon his chest; thecigarette ash falls into this, and Carre smokes without moving, incleanly fashion. 

I look at the ash, the smoke, the yellow, emaciated face, and reflectsadly that it is not enough to have the will to live; one must haveteeth. 

Not every one knows how to suffer, and even when we know, we must setabout it the right way, if we are to come off with honour. As soon ashe is on the table, Carre looks round him and asks:

"Isn't there any one to squeeze my head to-day?"

If there is no answer, he repeats anxiously:

"Who is going to squeeze my head to-day?"

Then a nurse approaches, takes his head between her hands andpresses. . . . I can begin; as soon as some one is "squeezing his head"Carre is good. 

Lerondeau's method is different. He wants some one to hold his hands. When there is no one to do this, he shrieks: "I shall fall. "

It is no use to tell him that he is on a solid table, and that he neednot be afraid. He gropes about for the helpful hands, and cries, thesweat breaking out on his brow: "I know I shall fall. " Then I get someone to come and hold his hands, for suffering, at any rate, is areality. . . . 

Each sufferer has his characteristic cry when the dressing is going on. The poor have only one, a simple cry that does service for them all. Itmakes one think of the women who, when they are bringing a child intothe world, repeat, at every pain, the one complaint they have adopted. 

Carre has a great many varied cries, and he does not say the same thingwhen the dressing is removed, and when the forceps are applied. 

At the supreme moment he exclaims: "Oh, the pain in my knee!"

Then, when the anguish abates, he shakes his head and repeats:

"Oh, that wretched knee!"

When it is the turn of the thigh, he is exasperated. 

"Now it's this thigh again!"

And he repeats this incessantly, from second to second. Then we go onto the wound under his heel, and Carre begins:

"Well, what is wrong with the poor heel?"

Finally, when he is tired of singing, he murmurs softly and regularly:

"They don't know how that wretched knee hurts me. . . They don't know howit hurts me. "

Lerondeau, who is, and always will be, a little boy compared withCarre, is very poor in the matter of cries. But when he hears hiscomplaints, he checks his own cries, Borrows them. Accordingly, I hearhim beginning:

"Oh, my poor knee! . . . They don't know it hurts!"

One morning when he was shouting this at the top of his voice, I askedhim gravely:

"Why do you make the same complaints as Carre?"

Marie is only a peasant, but he showed me a face that was reallyoffended:

"It's not true. I don't say the same things. "

I said no more, for there are no souls so rugged that they cannot feelcertain stings. 

Marie has told me the story of his life and of his campaign. As he isnot very eloquent, It was for the most part a confused murmur with anever-recurring protestation:

"I was a good one to work, you know, strong as a horse. "

Yet I can hardly imagine that there was once a Marie Lerondeau who wasa robust young fellow, standing firm and erect between the handles of aplough. I know him only as a man lying on his back, and I even find itdifficult to picture to myself what his shape and aspect will be whenwe get him on his feet again. 

Marie did his duty bravely under fire. "He stayed alone with the wagonsand when he was wounded, the Germans kicked him with their heavyboots. " These are the salient points of the interrogatory. 

Now and again Lerondeau's babble ceases, and he looks up to theceiling, for this takes the place of distance and horizon to those wholie upon their backs. After a long, light silence, he looks at meagain, and repeats:

"I must have been pretty brave to stay alone with the wagons!"

True enough, Lerondeau was brave, and I take care to let people knowit. When strangers come in during the dressings, I show them Marie, whois making ready to groan, and say:

"This is Marie--Marie Lerondeau, you know. He has a fractured thigh, but he is a very brave fellow. He stayed alone with the wagons. "

The visitors nod their heads admiringly, and Marie controls himself. Heblushes a little, and the muscles of his neck swell with pride. Hemakes a sign with his eyes as if to say: "Yes, indeed, alone, all alonewith the wagons. " And meanwhile, the dressing has been nearly finished. 

The whole world must know that Marie stayed alone with the wagons. Iintend to pin a report of this on the Government pension certificate. 

Carre was only under fire once, and was hit almost immediately. He ismuch annoyed at this, for he had a good stock of courage, and now hehas to waste it within the walls of a hospital. 

He advanced through a huge beetroot field, and he ran with the otherstowards a fine white mist. All of a sudden, crack, he fell! His thighwas fractured. He fell among the thick leaves, on the waterlogged earth. 

Shortly afterwards his sergeant passed again, and said to him:

"We are going back to our trench, they shall come and fetch you later. "

Carre merely said:

"Put my haversack under my head. "

Evening was coming on; he prepared, gravely, to spend the night amongthe beetroots. And there he spent it, alone with a cold drizzling rain, meditating seriously until morning. 

It was fortunate that Carre brought such a stock of courage intohospital, for he needs it all. Successive operations and dressings makelarge drafts upon the most generous supplies. 

They put Carre upon the table, and I note an almost joyful resolutionin his look. To-day he has "all his strength, to the last ounce. "

But just to-day, I have but little to do, not much suffering toinflict. He has scarcely knitted his brows, when I begin to fasten upthe apparatus again. 

Then Carre's haggard face breaks into a smile, and he exclaims:

"Finished already? Put some more ether on, make it sting a bit atleast. "

Carre knows that the courage of which there was no need to-day willnot, perhaps, be available to-morrow. 

And to-morrow, and for many days after, Carre will have to beconstantly calling up those reserves of the soul which help the body tosuffer while it waits for the good offices of Nature. 

The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and striveswith all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do whenthere is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?

This leg, infected to the very marrow, seems to be slowly devouring theman to whom it belongs; we look at it anxiously, and the white-hairedMaster fixes two small light-blue eyes upon it, eyes accustomed toappraise the things of life, yet, for the moment, hesitant. 

I speak to Carre in veiled words of the troublesome, gangrenous leg. Hegives a toothless laugh, and settles the question at once. 

"Well, if the wretched thing is a nuisance, we shall have to get rid ofit. "

After this consent, we shall no doubt make up our minds to do so. 

Meanwhile Lerondeau is creeping steadily towards healing. 

Lying on his back, bound up in bandages and a zinc trough, andimprisoned by cushions, he nevertheless looks like a ship which thetide will set afloat at dawn. 

He is putting on flesh, yet, strange to say, he seems to get lighterand lighter. He is learning not to groan, not because his frail soul isgaining strength, but because the animal is better fed and more robust. 

His ideas of strength of mind are indeed very elementary. As soon as Ihear his first cry, in the warm room where his wound is dressed, I givehim an encouraging look, and say:

"Be brave, Marie! Try to be strong!"

Then he knits his brows, makes a grimace, and asks:

"Ought I to say 'By God!'?"

The zinc trough in which Marie's shattered leg has been lying has lostits shape; it has become oxydised and is split at the edges; so I havedecided to change it. 

I take it away, look at it, and throw it into a corner. Marie followsmy movements with a scared glance. While I am adjusting the new trough, a solid, comfortable one, but rather different in appearance, he castsan eloquent glance at the discarded one, and his eyes fill with copioustears. 

This change is a small matter; but in the lives of the sick, there areno small things. 

Lerondeau will weep for the old zinc fragment for two days, and it willbe a long time before he ceases to look distrustfully at the newtrough, and to criticise it in those minute and bitter terms which onlya connoisseur can understand or invent. 

Carre, on the other hand, cannot succeed in carrying along his body bythe generous impulse of his soul. Everything about him save his eyesand his liquid voice foreshadow the corpse. Throughout the winter daysand the long sleepless nights, he looks as if he were dragging along aderelict. 

He strains at it . . . With his poignant songs and his brave words whichfalter now, and often die away in a moan. 

I had to do his dressing in the presence of Marie. The amount of workto be got through, and the cramped quarters made this necessary. Mariewas grave and attentive as if he were taking a lesson, and, indeed, itwas a lesson in patience and courage. But all at once, the teacherbroke down. In the middle of the dressing, Carre opened his lips, andin spite of himself, began to complain without restraint or measure, giving up the struggle in despair. 

Lerondeau listened, anxious and uneasy; and Carre, knowing that Mariewas listening, continued to lament, like one who has lost all sense ofshame. 

Lerondeau called me by a motion of his eyelids. He said:

"Carre!. . . "

And he added:

"I saw his slough. Lord! he is bad. "

Lerondeau has a good memory for medical terms. Yes, he saw Carre'sslough. He himself has the like on his posterior and on his heel; butthe tear that trembles in the corner of his eye is certainly for Carre. 

And then, he knows, he feels that HIS wounds are going to heal. 

But it is bad for Marie to hear another complaining before his own turn. 

He comes to the table very ill-disposed. His nerves have been shakenand are unusually irritable. 

At the first movement, he begins with sighs and those "Poor devils!"which are his artless and habitual expressions of self-pity. And then, all at once, he begins to scream, as I had not heard him scream for along time. He screams in a sort of frenzy, opening his mouth widely, and shrieking with all the strength of his lungs, and with all thestrength of his face, it would seem, for it is flushed and bathed insweat. He screams unreasonably at the lightest touch, in an incoherentand disorderly fashion. 

Then, ceasing to exhort him to be calm with gentle and compassionatewords, I raise my voice suddenly and order the boy to be quiet, in asevere tone that admits of no parleying. . . 

Marie's agitation subsides at once, like a bubble at the touch of afinger. The ward still rings with my imperious order. A good lady whodoes not understand at once, stares at me in stupefaction. 

But Marie, red and frightened, controls his unreasonable emotion. Andas long as the dressing lasts, I dominate his soul strenuously toprevent him from suffering in vain, just as others hold and grasp hiswrists. 

Then, presently, it is all over. I give him a fraternal smile thatrelaxes the tension of his brow as a bow is unbent. 

A lady, who is a duchess at the least, came to visit the wounded. Sheexhaled such a strong, sweet perfume that she cannot have distinguishedthe odour of suffering that pervades this place. 

Carre was shown to her as one of the most interesting specimens of thehouse. She looked at him with a curious, faded smile, which, thanks topaint and powder, still had a certain beauty. 

She made some patriotic remarks to Carre full of allusions to hisconduct under fire. And Carre ceased staring out of the window to lookat the lady with eyes full of respectful astonishment. 

And then she asked Carre what she could send him that he would like, with a gesture that seemed to offer the kingdoms of the earth and theglory of them. 

Carre, in return, gave her a radiant smile; he considered for a momentand then said modestly:

"A little bit of veal with new potatoes. "

The handsome lady thought it tactful to laugh. And I felt instinctivelythat her interest in Carre was suddenly quenched. 

An old man sometimes comes to visit Carre. He stops before the bed, andwith a stony face pronounces words full of an overflowing benevolence. 

"Give him anything he asks for. . . . Send a telegram to his family. "

Carre protests timidly: "Why a telegram? I have no one but my poor oldmother; it would frighten her. "

The little old gentleman emerges from his varnished boots like avariegated plant from a double vase. 

Carre coughs--first, to keep himself in countenance, and, secondly, because his cruel bronchitis takes this opportunity to give him ashaking. 

Then the old gentleman stoops, and all his medals hang out from histunic like little dried-up breasts. He bends down, puffing and pouting, without removing his gold-trimmed KEPI, and lays a deaf ear on Carre'schest with an air of authority. 

Carre's leg has been sacrificed. The whole limb has gone, leaving ahuge and dreadful wound level with the trunk. 

It is very surprising that the rest of Carre did not go with the leg. 

He had a pretty hard day. 

O life! O soul! How you cling to this battered carcase! O little gleamon the surface of the eye! Twenty times I saw it die down and kindleagain. And it seemed too suffering, too weak, too despairing ever toreflect anything again save suffering, weakness, and despair. 

During the long afternoon, I go and sit between two beds besideLerondeau. I offer him cigarettes, and we talk. This means that we saynothing, or very little. . . . But it is not necessary to speak when onehas a talk with Lerondeau. 

Marie is very fond of cigarettes, but what he likes still better isthat I should come and sit by him for a bit. When I pass through theward, he taps coaxingly upon his sheet, as one taps upon a bench toinvite a friend to a seat. 

Since he told me about his life at home and his campaign, he has notfound much to say to me. He takes the cakes with which his little shelfis laden, and crunches them with an air of enjoyment. 

"As for me, " he says, "I just eat all the time, " and he laughs. 

If he stops eating to smoke, he laughs again. Then there is anagreeable silence. Marie looks at me, and begins to laugh again. Andwhen I get up to go, he says: "Oh, you are not in such a great hurry, we can chat a little longer!"

Lerondeau's leg was such a bad business that it is now permanentlyshorter than the other by a good twelve centimetres. So at least itseems to us, looking down on it from above. 

But Lerondeau, who has only seen it from afar by raising his head alittle above the table while his wounds are being dressed, has noticedonly a very slight difference in length between his two legs. 

He said philosophically:

"It is shorter, but with a good thick sole. . . . "

When Marie was better, he raised himself on his elbow, and heunderstood the extent of his injury more clearly. 

"I shall want a VERY thick sole, " he remarked. 

Now that Lerondeau can sit up, he, too, can estimate the extent of thedamage from above; but he is happy to feel life welling up once more inhim, and he concludes gaily:

"What I shall want is not a sole, but a little bench. "

But Carre is ill, terribly ill. 

That valiant soul of his seems destined to be left alone, for all elseis failing. 

He had one sound leg. Now it is stiff and swollen. 

He had healthy, vigorous arms. Now one of them is covered withabscesses. 

The joy of breathing no longer exists for Carre, for his cough shakeshim savagely in his bed. 

The back, by means of which we rest, has also betrayed him. Here andthere it is ulcerated; for man was not meant to lie perpetually on hisback, but only to lie and sleep on it after a day of toil. 

For man was not really intended to suffer with his miserable, faithlessbody!

And his heart beats laboriously. 

There was mischief in the bowel too. So much so, that one day Carre wasunable to control himself, before a good many people who had come in. 

In spite of our care, in spite of our friendly assurances, Carre was soashamed that he wept. He who always said that a man ought not to cry, he who never shed a tear in the most atrocious suffering, sobbed withshame on account of this accident. And I could not console him. 

He no longer listens to all we say to him. He no longer answers ourquestions. He has mysterious fits of absence. 

He who was so dignified in his language, expresses himself andcomplains with the words of a child. 

Sometimes he comes up out of the depths and speaks. 

He talks of death with an imaginative lucidity which sounds like actualexperience. 

Sometimes he sees it . . . And as he gazes, his pupils suddenly distend. 

But he will not, he cannot make up his mind. . . . 

He wants to suffer a little longer. 

I draw near to his bed in the gathering darkness. His breathing is solight that suddenly, I stop and listen open-mouthed, full of anxiety. 

Then Carre suddenly opens his eyes. 

Will he sigh and groan? No. He smiles and says:

"What white teeth you have!"

Then he dreams, as if he were dying. 

Could you have imagined such a martyrdom, my brother, when you weredriving the plough into your little plot of brown earth?

Here you are, enduring a death-agony of five months swathed in theselivid wrappings, without even the rewards that are given to others. 

Your breast, your shroud must be bare of even the humblest of therewards of valour, Carre. 

It was written that you should suffer without purpose and without hope. 

But I will not let all your sufferings be lost in the abyss. And so Irecord them thus at length. 

Lerondeau has been brought down into the garden. I find him there, stretched out on a cane chair, with a little kepi pulled down over hiseyes, to shade them from the first spring sunshine. 

He talks a little, smokes a good deal, and laughs more. 

I look at his leg, but he hardly ever looks at it himself; he no longerfeels it. 

He will forget it even more utterly after a while, and he will live asif it were natural enough for a man to live with a stiff, distortedlimb. 

Forget your leg, forget your sufferings, Lerondeau. But the world mustnot forget them. 

And I leave Marie sitting in the sun, with a fine new pink colour inhis freckled cheeks. 

Carre died early this morning. Lerondeau leaves us to-morrow. 

MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS

I

Were modesty banished from the rest of the earth, it would no doubtfind a refuge in Mouchon's heart. 

I see him still as he arrived, on a stretcher full of little pebbles, with his mud be-plastered coat, and his handsome, honest face, likethat of a well-behaved child. 

"You must excuse me, " he said; "we can't keep ourselves very clean. "

"Have you any lice?" asks the orderly, as he undresses him. 

Mouchon flushes and looks uneasy. 

"Well, if I have, they don't really belong to me. "

He has none, but he has a broken leg, "due to a torpedo. "

The orderly cuts open his trouser, and I tell him to take off the boot. Mouchon puts out his hand, and says diffidently:

"Never mind the boot. "

"But, my good fellow, we can't dress your leg without taking off yourboot. "

Then Mouchon, red and confused, objects:

"But if you take off the boot, I'm afraid my foot will smell. . . . "

I have often thought of this answer. And believe me, Mouchon, I havenot yet met the prince who is worthy to take off your boots and washyour humble feet. 

II

With his forceps the doctor lays hold carefully of a mass of bloodydressings, and draws them gently out of a gaping wound in the abdomen. A ray of sunshine lights him at his work, and the whole of the frailshed trembles to the roar of the cannon. 

"I am a big china-dealer, " murmurs the patient. "You come from Paris, and I do, too. Save me, and you shall see. . . . I'll give you a finepiece of china. "

The plugs are coming out by degrees; the forceps glitter, and the rayof sunshine seems to tremble under the cannonade, as do the floor, thewalls, the light roof, the whole earth, the whole universe, drunk withfatigue. 

Suddenly, from the depths of space, a whining sound arises, swells, rends the air above the shed, and the shell bursts a few yards off, with the sound of a cracked object breaking. 

The thin walls seem to quiver under the pressure of the air. The doctormakes a slight movement of his head, as if to see, after all, where thething fell. 

Then the china-dealer, who noted the movement, says in a quiet voice:

"Don't take any notice of those small things, they don't do any harm. Only save me, and I will give you a beautiful piece of china orearthenware, whichever you like. "

III

The root of the evil is not so much the shattered leg, as the littlewound in the arm, from which so much good blood was lost. 

With his livid lips, no longer distinguishable from the rest of hisface, and the immense black pupils of his eyes, the man shows acountenance irradiated by a steadfast soul, which will not give in tillthe last moment. He contemplates the ravages of his body almostseverely, and without illusion, and watching the surgeons as they scrubtheir hands, he says in a grave voice:

"Tell my wife that my last thoughts were of her and our children. "

Ah! it was not a veiled question, for, without a moment's hesitation, he allows us to put the mask over his face. 

The solemn words seem still to echo through the ward:

"Tell my wife. . . "

That manly face is not the face of one who could be deceived by softwords and consoling phrases. The white blouse turns away. The surgeon'seyes grow dim behind his spectacles, and in solemn tones he replies:

"We will not fail to do so, friend. "

The patient's eyelids flutter--as one waves a handkerchief from thedeck of a departing steamer--then, breathing in the ether steadily, hefalls into a dark slumber. 

He never wakes, and we keep our promise to him. 

IV

A few days before the death of Tricot, a very annoying thing happenedto him; a small excrescence, a kind of pimpel, appeared on the side ofhis nose. 

Tricot had suffered greatly; only some fragments of his hands remained;but, above all, he had a great opening in his side, a kind of fetidmouth, through which the will to live seemed to evaporate. 

Coughing, spitting, looking about with wide, agonised eyes in search ofelusive breath, having no hands to scratch oneself with, being unableto eat unaided, and further, never having the smallest desire toeat--could this be called living? And yet Tricot never gave in. Hewaged his own war with the divine patience of a man who had waged thegreat world war, and who knows that victory will not come right away. 

But Tricot had neither allies nor reserves; he was all alone, so wastedand so exhausted that the day came when he passed almost imperceptiblyfrom the state of a wounded to that of a dying man. 

And it was just at this moment that the pimple appeared. 

Tricot had borne the greatest sufferings courageously; but he seemed tohave no strength to bear this slight addition to his woes. 

"Monsieur, " stammered the orderly who had charge of him, utterlydejected, "I tell you, that pimple is the spark that makes the cupoverflow. "

And in truth the cup overflowed. This misfortune was too much. Tricotbegan to complain, and from that moment I felt that he was doomed. 

I asked him several times a day, thinking of all his wounds: "How areyou, old fellow?" And he, thinking of nothing but the pimple, answeredalways:

"Very bad, very bad! The pimple is getting bigger. "

It was true. The pimple had come to a head, and I wanted to prick it. 

Tricot, who had allowed us to cut into his chest without ananaesthetic, exclaimed with tears:

"No, no more operations! I won't have any more operations. "

All day long he lamented about his pimple, and the following night hedied. 

"It was a bad pimple, " said the orderly; "it was that which killed him. "

Alas! It was not a very "bad pimple, " but no doubt it killed him. 

V

Mehay was nearly killed, but he did not die; so no great harm was done. 

The bullet went through his helmet, and only touched the bone. Thebrain is all right. So much the better. 

No sooner had Mehay come to, and hiccoughed a little in memory of thechloroform, than he began to look round with interest at all that washappening about him. 

Three days after the operation, Mehay got up. It would have beenuseless to forbid this proceeding. Mehay would have disobeyed ordersfor the first time in his life. We could not even think of taking awayhis clothes. The brave man never lacks clothes. 

Mehay accordingly got up, and his illness was a thing of the past. 

Every morning, Mehay rises before day-break and seizes a broom. Rapidlyand thoroughly, he makes the ward as dean as his own heart. He neverforgets any corner, and he manages to pass the brush gently under thebeds without waking his sleeping comrades, and without disturbing thosewho are in pain. Sometimes Mehay hands basins or towels, and he is asgentle as a woman when he helps to dress Vossaert, whose limbs are numband painful. 

At eight o'clock, the ward is in perfect order, and as the dressingsare about to begin, Mehay suddenly appears in a fine clean apron. Hewatches my hands carefully as they come and go, and he is always in theright place to hand the dressing to the forceps, to pour out thespirit, or to lend a hand with a bandage, for he very soon learned tobandage skilfully. 

He does not say a word; he just looks. The bit of his forehead thatshows under his own bandages is wrinkled with the earnestness of hisattention--and he has those blue marks by which we recognise the miner. 

Sometimes it is his turn to have a dressing. But scarcely is itcompleted when he is up again with his apron before him, silently busy. 

At eleven o'clock, Mehay disappears. He has gone, perhaps, to get abreath of fresh air? Oh, no! Here he is back again with a trayful ofbowls. And he hands round the soup. 

In the evening he hands the thermometer. He helps the orderlies so muchthat he leaves them very little to do. 

All this time the bones of his skull are at work under his bandages, and the red flesh is growing. But we are not to trouble about that: itwill manage all alone. The man, however, cannot be idle. He works, andtrusts to his blood, "which is healthy. "

In the evening, when the ward is lighted by a night-light, and I comein on tiptoe to give a last look round, I hear a voice laboriouslyspelling: "B-O, Bo; B-I, Bi; N-E, Ne, Bobine. " It is Mehay, learning toread before going to bed. 

VI

A lamp has been left alight, because the men are not asleep yet, andthey are allowed to smoke for a while. It would be no fun to smoke, unless one could see the smoke. 

The former bedroom of the mistress of the house makes a very light, very clean ward. Under the draperies which have been fastened up to theceiling and covered with sheets, old Louarn lies motionless, waitingfor his three shattered limbs to mend. He is smoking a cigarette, theash from which falls upon his breast. Apologising for the little heapsof dirt that make his bed the despair of the orderlies, he says to me:

"You know, a Breton ought to be a bit dirty. "

I touch the weight attached to his thigh, and he exclaims:

"Ma doue! Ma doue! Caste! Caste!"

These are oaths of a kind, of his own coining, which make every onelaugh, and himself the first. He adds, as he does every day:

"Doctor, you never hurt me so much before as you have done this time. "

Then he laughs again. 

Lens is not asleep yet, but he is as silent as usual. He has scarcelyuttered twenty words in three weeks. 

In a corner, Mehay patiently repeats: "P-A, Pa, " and the orderly who isteaching him to read presses his forefinger on the soiled page. 

I make my way towards Croin, Octave. I sit down by the bed in silence. 

Croin turns a face half hidden by bandages to me, and puts a leg dampwith sweat out from under the blankets, for fever runs high just atthis time. He too, is silent; he knows as well as I do that he is notgoing on well; but all the same, he hopes I shall go away withoutspeaking to him. 

No. I must tell him. I bend over him and murmur certain things. 

He listens, and his chin begins to tremble, his boyish chin, which iscovered with a soft, fair down. 

Then, with the accent of his province, he says in a tearful, hesitatingvoice:

"I have already given an eye, must I give a hand too?"

His one remaining eye fills with tears. And seeing the sound hand, Ipress it gently before I go. 

VII

When I put my fingers near his injured eye, Croin recoils a little. 

"Don't be afraid, " I say to him. 

"Oh, I'm not afraid!"

And he adds proudly:

"When a chap has lived on Hill 108, he can't ever be afraid of anythingagain. "

"Then why do you wince?"

"It's just my head moving back of its own accord. I never think of it. "

And it is true; the man is not afraid, but his flesh recoils. 

When the bandage is properly adjusted, what remains visible of Groin'sface is young, agreeable, charming. I note this with satisfaction, andsay to him:

"There's not much damage done on this side. We'll patch you up so wellthat you will still be able to make conquests. "

He smiles, touches his bandage, looks at his mutilated arm, seems tolose himself for a while in memories, and murmurs:

"May be. But the girls will never come after me again as they usedto. . . "

VIII

"The skin is beginning to form over the new flesh. A few weeks more, and then a wooden leg. You will run along like a rabbit. "

Plaquet essays a little dry laugh which means neither yes nor no, butwhich reveals a great timidity, and something else, a great anxiety. 

"For Sundays, you can have an artificial leg. You put a boot on it. Thetrouser hides it all. It won't show a bit. "

The wounded man shakes his head slightly, and listens with a gentle, incredulous smile. 

"With an artificial leg, Plaquet, you will, of course, be able to goout. It will be almost as it was before. "

Plaquet shakes his head again, and says in a low voice:

"Oh, I shall never go out!"

"But with a good artificial leg, Plaquet, you will be able to walkalmost as well as before. Why shouldn't you go out?"

Plaquet hesitates and remains silent. 

"Why?"

Then in an almost inaudible voice he replies:

"I will never go out. I should be ashamed. "

Plaquet will wear a medal on his breast. He is a brave soldier, and byno means a fool. But there are very complex feelings which we must notjudge too hastily. 

IX

In the corner of the ward there is a little plank bed which is like allthe other little beds. But buried between its sheets there is the smileof Mathouillet, which is like no other smile. 

Mathouillet, after throwing a good many bombs, at last got one himself. In this disastrous adventure, he lost part of his thigh, receivedseveral wounds, and gradually became deaf. Such is the fate ofbombardier-grenadier Mathouillet. 

The bombardier-grenadier has a gentle, beardless face, which for manyweeks must have expressed great suffering, and, which is now beginningto show a little satisfaction. 

But Mathouillet hears so badly that when one speaks to him he onlysmiles in answer. 

If I come into the ward, Mathouillet's smile awaits and welcomes me. When the dressing is over, Mathouillet thanks me with a smile. If Ilook at the temperature chart, Mathouillet's smile follows me, but notquestioningly; Mathouillet has faith in me, but his smile says a numberof unspoken things that I understand perfectly. Conversation isdifficult, on account of this unfortunate deafness--that is to say, conversation as usually carried on. But we two, happily, have no needof words. For some time past, certain smiles have been enough for us. And Mathouillet smiles, not only with his eyes or with his lips, butwith his nose, his beardless chin, his broad, smooth forehead, crownedby the pale hair of the North, with all his gentle, boyish face. 

Now that Mathouillet can get up, he eats at the table, with hiscomrades. To call him to meals, Baraffe utters a piercing cry, whichreaches the ear of the bombardier-grenadier. 

He arrives, shuffling his slippers along the floor, and examines allthe laughing faces. As he cannot hear, he hesitates to sit down, andthis time his smile betrays embarrassment and confusion. 

Coming very close to him, I say loudly:

"Your comrades are calling you to dinner, my boy. "

"Yes, yes, " he replies, "but because they know I am deaf, theysometimes try to play tricks on me. "

His cheeks flush warmly as he makes this impromptu confidence. Then hemakes up his mind to sit down, after interrogating me with his mostaffectionate smile. 

X

Once upon a time, Paga would have been called un type; now he is unnumero. This means that he is an original, that his ways of consideringand practising life are unusual; and as life here is reduced entirelyto terms of suffering, it means that his manner of suffering differsfrom that of other people. 

From the very beginning, during those hard moments when the wounded manlies plunged in stupor and self-forgetfulness, Paga distinguishedhimself by some remarkable eccentricities. 

Left leg broken, right foot injured, such was the report on Paga'shospital sheet. 

Now the leg was not doing at all well. Every morning, the good headdoctor stared at the swollen flesh with his little round discolouredeyes and said: "Come, we must just wait till to-morrow. " But Paga didnot want to wait. 

Flushed with fever, his hands trembling, his southern accentexaggerated by approaching delirium, he said, as soon as we came to seehim. 

"My wish, my wish! You know my wish, doctor. "

Then, lower, with a kind of passion:

"I want you to cut it off, you know. I want you to cut this leg. Oh! Ishan't be happy till it is done. Doctor, cut it, cut it off. "

We didn't cut it at all, and Paga's business was very successfullyarranged. I even feel sure that this leg became quite a respectablelimb again. 

I am bound to say Paga understood that he had meddled with things whichdid not concern him. He nevertheless continued to offer imperativeadvice as to the manner in which he wished to be nursed. 

"Don't pull off the dressings! I won't have it. Do you hear, doctor?Don't pull. I won't have it. "

Then he would begin to tremble nervously all over his body and to say:

"I am quite calm! Oh, I am really calm. See, Michelet, see, Brugneau, Iam calm. Doctor, see, I am quite calm. "

Meantime the dressings were gradually loosening under a trickle ofwater, and Paga muttered between his teeth:

"He's pulling, he's pulling. . . . Oh, the cruel man! I won't have it, Iwon't have it. "

Then suddenly, with flaming cheeks:

"That's right. That's right! See, Michelet, see, Brugneau: thedressings have come away. Sergeant, Sergeant, the dressings areloosened. "

He clapped his hands, possessed by a furtive joy; then he suddenlybecame conscious, and with a deep furrow between his brows, he began togive orders again. 

"Not any tincture of iodine to-day, doctor. Take away those forceps, doctor, take them away. "

Meanwhile the implacable forceps did their work, the tincture of iodineperformed its chilly function; then Paga yelled:

"Quickly, quickly. Kiss me, kiss me. "

With his arms thrown out like tentacles, he beat upon the air, andseized haphazard upon the first blouse that passed. Then he wouldembrace it frantically. 

Thus it happened that he once showered kisses on Michelet's hands, objects by no means suitable for such a demonstration. Michelet said, laughing:

"Come, stop it; my hands are dirty. "

And then poor Paga began to kiss Michelet's bare, hairy arms, sayingdistractedly:

"If your hands are dirty, your arms are all right. "

Alas, what has become of all those who, during days and nights ofpatient labour, I saw gradually shaking off the dark empire of thenight and coming back again to joy? What has become of the smoulderingfaggot which an ardent breath finally kindled into flame?

What became of you, precious lives, poor wonderful souls, for whom Ifought so many obscure great battles, and who went off again into therealm of adventure?

You, Paga, little fellow, where are you? Do you remember the time whenI used to dress your two wounds alternately, and when you said to mewith great severity:

"The leg to-day, only the leg. It's not the day for the foot. "

XI

Sergeant Lecolle is distinguished by a huge black beard, which fails togive a ferocious expression to the gentlest face in the world. 

He arrived the day little Delporte died, and scarcely had he emergedfrom the dark sleep when, opening his eyes, he saw Delporte die. 

I went to speak to him several times. He looked so exhausted, his blackbeard was so mournful that I kept on telling him: "Sergeant, your woundis not serious. "

Each time he shook his head as if to say that he took but littleinterest in the matter, and tried to close his eyes. 

Lecolle is too nervous; he was not able to close his eyes, and he sawDelporte dead, and he had been obliged to witness all Delporte's deathagony; for when one has a wound in the right shoulder, one can only lieupon the left shoulder. 

The ward was full, I could not change the sergeant's place, and yet Ishould have liked to let him be alone all day with his own pain. 

Now Lecolle is better; he feels better without much exuberance, with aseriousness which knows and foresees the bufferings of Fate. 

Lecolle was a stenographer "in life. " We are no longer "in life, " butthe good stenographer retains his principles. When his wounds aredressed, he looks carefully at the little watch on his wrist. He moansat intervals, and stops suddenly to say:

"It has taken fifty seconds to-day to loosen the dressings. Yesterday, you took sixty-two seconds. "

His first words after the operation were:

"Will you please tell me how many minutes I was unconscious?"

XII

I first saw Derancourt in the room adjoining the chapel. A band ofcrippled men, returning from Germany after a long captivity, had justbeen brought in there. 

There were some fifty of them, all looking with delighted eyes at thewalls, the benches, the telephone, all the modest objects in thiswaiting-room, objects which are so much more attractive under the lightof France than in harsh exile. 

The waiting-room seemed to have been transformed into a museum ofmisery: there were blind men, legless and armless men, paralysed men, their faces ravaged by fire and powder. 

A big fellow said, lifting his deformed arm with an effort:

"I tricked them; they thought to the end that I was really paralysed. Ilook well, but that's because they sent us to Constance for the lastweek, to fatten us up. "

A dark, thin man was walking to and fro, towing his useless foot afterhim by the help of a string which ran down his trouser leg; and helaughed:

"I walk more with my fist than with my foot. Gentlemen, gentlemen, whowould like to pull Punch's string?"

All wore strange costumes, made up of military clothing and patchedcivilian garments. 

On a bench sat fifteen or twenty men with about a dozen legs betweenthem. It was among these that I saw Derancourt. He was holding hiscrutches in one hand and looking round him, stroking his long fairmoustache absently. 

Derancourt became my friend. 

His leg had been cut off at the thigh, and this had not yet healed; hehad, further, a number of other wounds which had closed more or lessduring his captivity. 

Derancourt never talked of himself, much less of his misfortune. I knewfrom his comrades that he had fought near Longwy, his native town, andthat he had lain grievously wounded for nine days on the battlefield. He had seen his father, who had come to succour him, killed at hisside; then he had lain beside the corpse, tortured by a delirious dreamin which nine days and nine nights had followed one upon the other, like a dizziness of alternate darkness and dazzling light. In themornings, he sucked the wet grass he clutched when he stretched out hishands. 

Afterwards he had suffered in Germany, and finally he had come back toFrance, mutilated, covered with wounds, and knowing that his wife andchildren were left without help and without resources in the invadedterritory. 

Of all this Derancourt said not a word. He apparently did not know howto complain, and he contemplated the surrounding wretchedness with agrave look, full of experience, which would have seemed a little coldbut for the tremulous mobility of his features. 

Derancourt never played, never laughed. He sought solitude, and spenthours, turning his head slowly from side to side, contemplating thewalls and the ceiling like one who sees things within himself. 

The day came when we had to operate on Derancourt, to make his stump ofa thigh serviceable. 

He was laid on the table. He remained calm and self-controlled asalways, looking at the preparations for the operation with a kind ofindifference. 

We put the chloroform pad under his nose; he drew two or three deepbreaths, and then a strange thing happened: Derancourt began to sob ina terrible manner, and to talk of all those things he had nevermentioned. The grief he had suppressed for months overflowed, orrather, rushed out in desperate, heartrending lamentations. 

It was not the disorderly intoxication, the muscular, animal rebellionof those who are thrown into this artificial sleep. It was the suddenbreak-up of an overstrained will under a slight shock. For monthsDerancourt had braced himself against despair, and now, all of asudden, he gave way, and abandoned himself to poignant words and tears. The flood withdrew suddenly, leaving the horrible, chaotic depthsbeneath the sea visible. 

We ceased scrubbing our hands, and stood aghast and deeply moved, fullof sadness and respect. 

Then some one exclaimed:

"Quick! quick! More chloroform! Stupefy him outright, let him sleep. "

XIII

"But a man can't be paralysed by a little hole in his back! I tell youit was only a bullet. You must take it out, doctor. Take it out, and Ishall be all right. "

Thus said a Zouave, who had been lying helpless for three days on hisbed. 

"If you knew how strong I am! Look at my arms! No one could unhook abag like me, and heave it over my shoulder--tock! A hundred kilos--withone jerk!"

The doctor looked at the muscular torso, and his face expressed pity, regret, embarrassment, and, perhaps, a certain wish to go away. 

"But this wretched bullet prevents me from moving my legs. You musttake it out, doctor, you must take it out!"

The doctor glances at the paralysed legs, and the swollen belly, already lifeless. He knows that the bullet broke the spine, and cutthrough the marrow which sent law and order into all this now inanimateflesh. 

"Operate, doctor. Look you, a healthy chap like me would soon get well. "

The doctor stammers vague sentences: the operation would be too seriousfor the present . . . Better wait. . . . 

"No, no. Never fear. My health is first-rate. Don't be afraid, theoperation is bound to be a success. "

His rugged face is contracted by his fixed idea. His voice softens;blind confidence and supplication give it an unusual tone. His heavyeyebrows meet and mingle under the stress of his indomitable will; hissoul makes such an effort that the immobility of his legs seemssuddenly intolerable. Heavens! Can a man WILL so intensely, and yet bepowerless to control his own body?

"Oh, operate, operate! You will see how pleased I shall be!"

The doctor twists the sheet round his forefinger; then, hearing awounded man groaning in the next ward, he gets up, says he will comeback presently, and escapes. 

XIV

The colloquy between the rival gods took place at the foot of the greatstaircase. 

The Arab soldier had just died. It was the Arab one used to see under ashed, seated gravely on the ground in the midst of other magnificentArabs. In those days they had boots of crimson leather, and majesticred mantles. They used to sit in a circle, contemplating from undertheir turbans the vast expanse of mud watered by the skies of Artois. To-day, they wear the ochre helmet, and show the profiles of Saracenwarriors. 

The Algerian has just been killed, kicked in the belly by his beautifulwhite horse. 

In the ambulance there was a Mussulman orderly, a well-to-do tradesman, who had volunteered for the work. He, on the other hand, was extremelyEuropean, nay, Parisian; but a plump, malicious smile showed itself inthe midst of his crisp grey beard, and he had the look in the eyespeculiar to those who come from the other side of the Mediterranean. 

Rashid "behaved very well. " He had found native words when tending thedying man, and had lavished on him the consolations necessary to thoseof his country. 

When the Algerian was dead, he arranged the winding-sheet himself, inhis own fashion; then he lighted a cigarette, and set out in search ofMonet and Renaud. 

For lack of space, we had no mortuary at the time in the ambulance. Corpses were placed in the chapel of the cemetery while awaitingburial. The military burial-ground had been established within theprecincts of the church, close by the civilian cemetery, and in a fewweeks it had invaded it like a cancer and threatened to devour it. 

Rashid had thought of everything, and this was why he went in search ofMonet and Renaud, Catholic priests and ambulance orderlies of thesecond class. 

The meeting took place at the foot of the great staircase. Leaning overthe balustrade, I listened, and watched the colloquy of the rival gods. 

Monet was thirty years old; he had fine, sombre eyes, and a stiffbeard, from which a pipe emerged. Renaud carried the thin face of aseminarist a little on one side. 

Monet and Renaud listened gravely, as became people who were decidingin the Name of the Father. Rashid was pleading for his dead Arab withsupple eloquence, wrapped in a cloud of tobacco-smoke:

"We cannot leave the Arab's corpse under a wagon, in the storm. . . . Thisman died for France, at his post. . . . He had a right to all honours, andit was hard enough as it was that he could not have the obsequies hewould surely have had in his own country. "

Monet nodded approvingly, and Renaud, his mouth half open, was seekingsome formula. 

It came, and this was it:

"Very well, Monsieur Rashid, take him into the church; that is God'shouse for every one. "

Rashid bowed with perfect deference, and went back to his dead. 

Oh, he arranged everything very well! He had made this funeral apersonal matter. He was the family, the master of the ceremonies, almost the priest. 

The Algerian's body accordingly lay in the chapel, covered with the oldfaded flag and a handful of chrysanthemums. 

It was here the bearers came to take it, and carry it to CONSECRATEDGROUND, to lie among the other comrades. 

Monet and Renaud were with us when it was lowered into the grave. Rashid represented the dead man's kindred with much dignity. He heldsomething in his hand which he planted in the ground before going away. It was that crescent of plain deal at the end of a stick which is stillto be seen in the midst of the worm-eaten crosses, in the shadow of thebelfry of L----. 

There the same decay works towards the intermingling and thereconciliation of ancient symbols and ancient dogmas. 

XV

Nogue is courageous, but Norman; this gives to courage a special form, which excludes neither reserve, nor prudence, nor moderation oflanguage. 

On the day when he was wounded, he bore a preliminary operation withperfect calm. Lifting up his shattered arm, I said:

"Are you suffering very much?" And he barely opened his lips to reply:

"Well . . . Perhaps a bit. "

Fever came the following days, and with it a certain discomfort. Noguecould not eat, and when asked if he did not feel rather hungry, heshook his head:

"I don't think so. "

Well, the arm was broken very high up, the wound looked unhealthy, thefever ran high, and we made up our minds that it was necessary to cometo a decision. 

"My poor Nogue, " I said, "we really can't do anything with that arm ofyours. Be sensible. Let us take it off. "

If we had waited for his answer, Nogue would have been dead by now. Hisface expressed great dissatisfaction, but he said neither yes nor no. 

"Don't be afraid, Nogue. I will guarantee the success of the operation. "

Then he asked to make his will. When the will had been made, Nogue waslaid upon the table and operated upon, without having formulated eitherconsent or refusal. 

When the first dressing was made, Nogue looked at his bleedingshoulder, and said:

"I suppose you couldn't have managed to leave just a little bit of arm?"

After a few days the patient was able to sit up in an arm-chair. Hiswhole being bore witness to a positive resurrection, but his tongueremained cautious. 

"Well, now, you see, you're getting on capitally. "

"Hum . . . Might be better. "

Never could he make up his mind to give his whole-hearted approval, even after the event, to the decision which had saved his life. When wesaid to him:

"YOU'RE all right. We've done the business for YOU!" he would notcommit himself. 

"We shall see, we shall see. "

He got quite well, and we sent him into the interior. Since then, hehas written to us, "business letters, " prudent letters which he signs"a poor mutilated fellow. "

XVI

Lapointe and Ropiteau always meet in the dressing ward. Ropiteau isbrought in on a stretcher, and Lapointe arrives on foot, jauntily, holding up his elbow, which is going on "as well as possible. "

Lying on the table, the dressings removed from his thigh, Ropiteauwaits to be tended, looking at a winter fly walking slowly along theceiling, like an old man bowed down with sorrow. As soon as Ropiteau'swounds are laid bare, Lapointe, who is versed in these matters, opensthe conversation. 

"What do they put on it?"

"Well, only yellow spirit. "

"That's the strongest of all. It stings, but it is first-rate forstrengthening the flesh. I always get ether. "

"Ether stinks so!"

"Yes, it stinks, but one gets used to it. It warms the blood. Don't youhave tubes any longer?"

"They took out the last on Tuesday. "

"Mine have been taken away, too. Wait a minute, old chap, let me lookat it. Does it itch?"

"Yes, it feels like rats gnawing at me. "

"If it feels like rats, it's all right. Mine feels like rats, too. Don't you want to scratch?"

"Yes, but they say I mustn't. "

"No, of course, you mustn't. . . . But you can always tap on the dressinga little with your finger. That is a relief. "

Lapointe leans over and examines Ropiteau's large wound. 

"Old chap, it's getting on jolly well. Same here; I'll show youpresently. It's red, the skin is beginning to grow again. But it isthin, very thin. "

Lapointe sits down to have his dressing cut away, then he makes a halfturn towards Ropiteau. 

"You see--getting on famously. "

Ropiteau admires unreservedly. 

"Yes, you're right. It looks first-rate. "

"And you know . . . Such a beastly mess came out of it. "

At this moment, the busy forceps cover up the wounds with the dressing, and the operation comes to an end. 

"So long!" says Lapointe to his elbow, casting a farewell glance at it. And he adds, as he gets to the door:

"Now there are only the damned fingers that won't get on. But I don'tcare. I've made up my mind to be a postman. "

XVII

Bouchenton was not very communicative. We knew nothing of his pasthistory. As to his future plans, he revealed them by one day presentingto the head doctor for his signature a paper asking leave to open aMoorish cafe at Medea after his recovery, a request the head doctorfelt himself unable to endorse. 

Bouchenton had undergone a long martyrdom in order to preserve an armfrom which the bone had been partially removed, but from which acertain amount of work might still be expected. He screamed like theothers, and his cry was "Mohabdi! Mohabdi!" When the forceps came near, he cried: "Don't put them in!" And after this he maintained a silencemade up of dignity and indolence. During the day he was to be seenwandering about the wards, holding up his ghostly muffled arm with hissound hand. In the evening, he learned to play draughts, because it isa serious, silent game, and requires consideration. 

Now one day when Bouchenton, seated on a chair, was waiting for hiswound to be dressed, the poor adjutant Figuet began to complain in avoice that was no more than the shadow of a voice, just as his body wasno more than the shadow of a body. 

Figuet was crawling at the time up the slopes of a Calvary where he wassoon to fall once more, never to rise again. 

The most stupendous courage and endurance foundered then in a despairfor which there seemed henceforth to be no possible alleviation. 

Figuet, I say, began to complain, and every one in the ward feigned tobe engrossed in his occupation, and to hear nothing, because when sucha man began to groan, the rest felt that the end of all things had come. 

Bouchenton turned his head, looked at the adjutant, seized his flabbyarm carefully with his right hand, and set out. Walking with littleshort steps he came to the table where the suffering man lay. 

Stretching out his neck, his great bowed body straining in an effort ofattention, he looked at the wounds, the pus, the soiled bandages, theworn, thin face, and his own wooden visage laboured under the stress ofall kinds of feelings. 

Then Bouchenton did a very simple thing; he relaxed his hold on his ownboneless arm, held out his right hand to Figuet, seized his transparentfingers and held them tightly clasped. 

The adjutant ceased groaning. As long as the silent pressure lasted, heceased to complain, ceased perhaps to suffer. Bouchenton kept his righthand there as long as it was necessary. 

I saw this, Bouchenton, my brother. I will not forget it. And I saw, too, your aching, useless left arm, which you had been obliged toabandon in order to have a hand to give, hanging by your side like alimp rag. 

XVIII

To be over forty years old, to be a tradesman of repute, well knownthroughout one's quarter, to be at the head of a prosperousprovision-dealer's business, and to get two fragments of shell--in theback and the left buttock respectively--is really a great misfortune;yet this is what happened to M. Levy, infantryman and Territorial. 

I never spoke familiarly to M. Levy, because of his age and his air ofrespectability; and perhaps, too, because, in his case, I felt a greatand special need to preserve my authority. 

Monsieur Levy was not always "a good patient. " When I first approachedhim, he implored me not to touch him "at any price. "

I disregarded these injunctions, and did what was necessary. Throughoutthe process, Monsieur Levy was snoring, be it said. But he woke up atlast, uttered one or two piercing cries, and stigmatised me as a"brute. " All right. 

Then I showed him the big pieces of cast-iron I had removed from hisback and his buttock respectively. Monsieur Levy's eyes at once filledwith tears; he murmured a few feeling words about his family, and thenpressed my hands warmly: "Thank you, thank you, dear Doctor. "

Since then, Monsieur Levy has suffered a good deal, I must admit. Thereare the plugs! And those abominable india-rubber tubes we push into thewounds! Monsieur Levy, kneeling and prostrating himself, his head inhis bolster, suffered every day and for several days without stoicismor resignation. I was called an "assassin" and also on severaloccasions, a "brute. " All right. 

However, as I was determined that Monsieur Levy should get well, Irenewed the plugs, and looked sharply after the famous india-rubbertubes. 

The time came when my hands were warmly pressed and my patient said:"Thank you, thank you, dear Doctor, " every day. 

At last Monsieur Levy ceased to suffer, and confined himself to thepeevish murmurs of a spoilt beauty or a child that has been scolded. But now no one takes him seriously. He has become the delight of theward; he laughs so heartily when the dressing is over, he is naturallyso gay and playful, that I am rather at a loss as to the properexpression to assume when, alluding to the past, he says, with a lookin which good nature, pride, simplicity, and a large proportion ofplayful malice are mingled:

"I suffered so much! so much!"

XIX

He was no grave, handsome Arab, looking as if he had stepped from thepages of the "Arabian Nights, " but a kind of little brown monster withan overhanging forehead and ugly, scanty hair. 

He lay upon the table, screaming, because his abdomen was very painfuland his hip was all tumefied. What could we say to him? He couldunderstand nothing; he was strange, terrified, pitiable. . . . 

At my wits' ends, I took out a cigarette and placed it between hislips. His whole face changed. He took hold of the cigarette delicatelybetween two bony fingers; he had a way of holding it which was a marvelof aristocratic elegance. 

While we finished the dressing, the poor fellow smoked slowly andgravely, with all the distinction of an Oriental prince; then, with anegligent gesture, he threw away the cigarette, of which he had onlysmoked half. 

Presently, suddenly becoming an animal, he spit upon my apron, andkissed my hand like a dog, repeating something which sounded like"Bouia! Bouia!"

XX

Gautreau looked like a beast of burden. He was heavy, square, solid ofbase and majestic of neck and throat. What he could carry on his backwould have crushed an ordinary man; he had big bones, so hard that thefragment of shell which struck him on the skull only cracked it, andgot no further into it. Gautreau arrived at the hospital alone, onfoot; he sat down on a chair in the corner, saying:

"No need to hurry; it's only a scratch. "

We gave him a cup of tea with rum in it, and he began to hum:

 En courant par les epeignes Je m'etios fait un ecourchon, Et en courant par les epeignes Et en courant apres not' couchon. 

"Ah!" said Monsieur Boissin, "you are a man! Come here, let me see. "

Gautreau went into the operating ward saying:

"It feels queer to be walking on dry ground when you've just come offthe slime. You see: it's only a scratch. But one never knows: there maybe some bits left in it. "

Dr. Boussin probed the wound, and felt the cracked bone. He was an oldsurgeon who had his own ideas about courage and pain. He made up hismind. 

"I am in a hurry; you are a man. There is just a little something to bedone to you. Kneel down there and don't stir. "

A few minutes later, Gautreau was on his knees, holding on to the legof the table. His head was covered with blood-stained bandages, and Dr. Boussin, chisel in hand, was tapping on his skull with the help of alittle mallet, like a sculptor. Gautreau exclaimed:

"Monsieur Bassin, Monsieur Bassin, you're hurting me. "

"Not Bassin, but Boussin, " replied the old man calmly. 

"Well, Boussin, if you like. "

There was a silence, and then Gautreau suddenly added:

"Monsieur Bassin, you are killing me with these antics. "

"No fear!"

"Monsieur Bassin, I tell you you're killing me. "

"Just a second more. "

"Monsieur Bassin, you're driving nails into my head, it's a shame. "

"I've almost finished. "

"Monsieur Bassin, I can't stand any more. "

"It's all over now, " said the surgeon, laying down his instruments. 

Gautreau's head was swathed with cotton wool and he left the ward. 

"The old chap means well, " he said, laughing, "but fancy knocking likethat . . . With a hammer! It's not that it hurts so much; the pain was nogreat matter. But it kills one, that sort of thing, and I'm not goingto stand that. "

XXI

There is only one man in the world who can hold Hourticq's leg, andthat is Monet. 

Hourticq, who is a Southerner, cries despairingly: "Oh, cette jammbe, cette jammbe!" And his anxious eyes look eagerly round for some one:not his doctor, but his orderly, Monet. Whatever happens, the doctorwill always do those things which doctors do. Monet is the only personwho can take the heel and then the foot in both hands, raise the leggently, and hold it in the air as long as it is necessary. 

There are people, it seems, who think this notion ridiculous. They areall jealous persons who envy Monet's position and would like to showthat they too know how to hold Hourticq's leg properly. But it is notmy business to show favour to the ambitious. As soon as Hourticq isbrought in, I call Monet. If Monet is engaged, well, I wait. He comes, lays hold of the leg, and Hourticq ceases to lament. It is sometimes along business, very long; big drops of sweat come out on Monet'sforehead. But I know that he would not give up his place for anythingin the world. 

When Mazy arrived at the hospital, Hourticq, who is no egoist, said tohim at once in a low tone:

"Yours is a leg too, isn't it? You must try to get Monet to hold it foryou. "

XXII

If Bouchard were not so bored, he would not be very wretched, for he isvery courageous, and he has a good temper. But he is terribly bored, inhis gentle, uncomplaining fashion. He is too ill to talk or play games. He cannot sleep; he can only contemplate the wall, and his own thoughtswhich creep slowly along it, like caterpillars. 

In the morning, I bring a catheter with me, and when Bouchard's woundsare dressed, I apply it, for unfortunately, he can no longer performcertain functions independently. 

Bouchard has crossed his hands behind the nape of his neck, and watchesthe process with a certain interest. I ask:

"Did I hurt you? Is it very unpleasant?"

Bouchard gives a melancholy smile and shakes his head:

"Oh, no, not at all! In fact it rather amuses me. It makes a fewminutes pass. The day is so long. . . . "

XXIII

THOUGHTS OF PROSPER RUFFIN

. . . God! How awful it is in this carriage! Who is it who is groaninglike that? It's maddening! And then, all this would never have happenedif they had only brought the coffee at the right time. Well now, awretched 77 . . . Oh, no! Who is it who is groaning like that? God, another jolt! No, no, man, we are not salad. Take care there. Mykidneys are all smashed. 

Ah! now something is dripping on my nose. Hi! You up there, what'shappening? He doesn't answer. I suppose it's blood, all this mess. 

Now again, some one is beginning to squeal like a pig. By the way, canit be me? What! it was I who was groaning! Upon my word, it's a littletoo strong, that! It was I myself who was making all the row, and I didnot know it. It's odd to hear oneself screaming. 

Ah! now it's stopping, their beastly motor. 

Look, there's the sun! What's that tree over there? I know, it's aJapanese pine. Well, you see, I'm a gardener, old chap. Oh, oh, oh! Myback! What will Felicie say to me?

Look, there's Felicie coming down to the washing trough. She pretendsnot to see me. . . . I will steal behind the elder hedge. Felicie!Felicie! I have a piece of a 77 in my kidneys. I like her best in herblue bodice. 

What are you putting over my nose, you people? It stinks horribly. I amchoking, I tell you. Felicie, Felicie. Put on your blue bodice with thewhite spots, my little Feli . . . Oh, but . . . Oh, but . . . !

Oh, the Whitsuntide bells already! God--the bells already . . . TheWhitsun bells . . . The bells. . . . 

XXIV

I remember him very well, although he was not long with us. Indeed Ithink that I shall never forget him, and yet he stayed such a shorttime. . . . 

When he arrived, we told him that an operation was necessary, and hemade a movement with his head, as if to say that it was our business, not his. 

We operated, and as soon as he recovered consciousness, he went offagain into a dream which was like a glorious delirium, silent andhaughty. 

His breathing was so impeded by blood that it sounded like groaning;but his eyes were full of a strange serenity. That look was never withus. 

I had to uncover and dress his wounds several times; and THOSE WOUNDSMUST HAVE SUFFERED. But to the last, he himself seemed aloof fromeverything, even his own sufferings. 

XXV

"Come in here. You can see him once more. "

I open the door, and push the big fair artilleryman into the room wherehis brother has just died. 

I turn back the sheet and uncover the face of the corpse. The flesh isstill warm. 

The big fellow looks like a peasant. He holds his helmet in both hands, and stares at his brother's face with eyes full of horror andamazement. Then suddenly, he begins to cry out:

"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!"

This cry of the rough man is unexpected, and grandiose as the voice ofancient tragedians chanting the threnody of a hero. 

Then he drops his helmet, throws himself on his knees beside thedeath-bed, takes the dead face between his hands and kisses it gentlyand slowly with a little sound of the lips, as one kisses a baby's hand. 

I take him by the arm and lead him away. His sturdy body is shaken bysobs which are like the neighing of a horse; he is blinded by histears, and knocks against all the furniture. He can do nothing butlament in a broken voice:

"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!"

XXVI

La Gloriette is amongst the pine-trees. I lift up a corner of thecanvas and he is there. In spite of the livid patches on the skin, inspite of the rigidity of the features, and the absence for all time ofthe glance, it is undoubtedly the familiar face. 

What a long time he suffered to win the right to be at last this thingwhich suffers no more!

I draw back the winding-sheet. The body is as yet but little touched bycorruption. The dressings are in place, as before. And as before, Ithink, as I draw back the sheet, of the look he will turn on me at themoment of suffering. 

But there is no longer any look, no longer any suffering, no longereven any movements. Only, only unimaginable eternity. 

For whom is the damp autumn breeze which flutters the canvas hungbefore the door? For whom the billowy murmur of the pine-trees and therays of light crossed by a flight of insects? For whom this growling ofcannon mingling now with the landscape like one of the sounds ofnature? For me only, for me, alone here with the dead. 

The corpse is still so near to the living man that I cannot make up mymind that I am alone, that I cannot make up my mind to think as when Iam alone. 

For indeed we spent too many days hoping together, enduring together, and if you will allow me to say so, my comrade, suffering together. Wespent too many days wishing for the end of the fever, examining thewound, searching after the deeply rooted cause of the disaster--bothtremulous, you from the effort to bear your pain, I sometimes fromhaving inflicted it. 

We spent so many days, do you remember, oh, body without a soul . . . Somany days fondly expecting the medal you had deserved. But it seemsthat one must have given an eye or a limb to be put on the list, andyou, all of a sudden, you gave your life. The medal had not come, forit does not travel so quickly as death. 

So many days! And now we are together again, for the last time. 

Well! I came for a certain purpose. I came to learn certain things atlast that your body can tell me now. 

I open the case. As before, I cut the dressings with the shiningscissors. And I was just about to say to you, as before: "If I hurtyou, call out. "

XXVII

At the edge of the beetroot field, a few paces from the road, in thewhite sand of Champagne, there is a burial-ground. 

Branches of young beech encircle it, making a rustic barrier that shutsout nothing, but allows the eyes and the winds to wander at will. Thereis a porch like those of Norman gardens. Near the entrance fourpine-trees were planted, and these have died standing at their posts, like soldiers. 

It is a burial-ground of men. 

In the villages, round the churches, or on the fair hill-sides, amongvines and flowers, there are ancient graveyards which the centuriesfilled slowly, and where woman sleeps beside man, and the child besidethe grandfather. 

But this burial-ground owes nothing to old age or sickness. It is theburial-ground of young, strong men. 

We may read their names on the hundreds of little crosses which repeatdaily in speechless unison: "There must be something more precious thanlife, more necessary than life . . . Since we are here. "

THE DEATH OF MERCIER

Mercier is dead, and I saw his corpse weep. . . . I did not think such athing possible. The orderly had just washed his face and combed hisgrey hair. 

I said: "You are not forty yet, my poor Mercier, and your hair isalmost white already. "

"It is because my life has been a very hard one, and I have had so manysorrows. I have worked so hard . . . So hard! And I have had so littleluck. "

There are pitiful little wrinkles all over his face; a thousanddisappointments have left indelible traces there. And yet his eyes arealways smiling; from out his faded features they shine, bright with anartless candour and radiant with hope. 

"You will cure me, and perhaps I shall be luckier in the future. "

I say "yes, " and I think, "Alas! No, no. "

But suddenly he calls me. Great dark hollows appear under the smilingeyes. A livid sweat bathes his forehead. 

"Come, come!" he says. "Something terrible is taking hold of me. SurelyI am going to die. "

We busy ourselves with the poor paralysed body. The face alone laboursto translate its sufferings. The hands make the very slightest movementon the sheet. The bullets of the machine-gun have cut off all the restfrom the sources of life. 

We do what we can, but I feel his heart beating more feebly; his lipsmake immense efforts to beg for one drop, one drop only from the vastcup of air. 

Gradually he escapes from this hell. I divine that his hand makes amovement as if to detain mine. 

"Stay by me, " he says; "I am afraid. "

I stay by him. The sweat no longer stands on his brow. The horribledistress passes off. The air flows again into the miserable breast. Thegentle eyes have not ceased to smile. 

"You will save me after all, " he says; "I have had too miserable a lifeto die yet, Monsieur. "

I press his hand to give him confidence, and I feel that his hard handis happy in mine. My fingers have groped in his flesh, his blood hasflowed over them, and this creates strong ties between two men. 

Calm seems completely restored. I talk to him of his beautiful nativeplace. He was a baker in a village of Le Cantal. I passed through itonce as a traveller in peace time. We recall the scent of thejuniper-bushes on the green slopes in summer, and the mineral fountainswith wonderful flavours that gush forth among the mountains. 

"Oh!" he exclaims, "I shall always see you!"

"You will see me, Mercier?"

He is a very simple fellow; he tries to explain, and merely adds:

"In my eyes. . . . I shall always see you in my eyes. "

What else does he see? What other thing is suddenly reflected in hiseyes?

"I think . . . Oh, it is beginning again!"

It is true; the spasm is beginning again. It is terrible. In spite ofour efforts, it overcomes the victim, and this time we are helpless. 

"I feel that I am going to die, " he says. 

The smiling eyes are still fixed imploringly upon me. 

"But you will save me, you will save me!"

Death has already laid a disfiguring hand on Mercier. 

"Stay by me. "

Yes, I will stay by you, and hold your hand. Is there nothing more Ican do for you?

His nostrils quiver. It is hard to have been wretched for forty years, and to have to give up the humble hope of smelling the pungent scent ofthe juniper-bushes once more. . . . 

His lips contract, and then relax gradually, so sadly. It is hard tohave suffered for forty years, and to be unable to quench one's lastthirst with the wonderful waters of our mountain springs. . . . 

Now the dark sweat gathers again on the hollow brow. Oh, it is hard todie after forty years of toil, without ever having had leisure to wipethe sweat from a brow that has always been bent over one's work. 

The sacrifice is immense, and we cannot choose our hour; we must makeit as soon as we hear the voice that demands it. 

The man must lay down his tools and say: "Here I am. "

Oh, how hard it is to leave this life of unceasing toil and sorrow!

The eyes still smile feebly. They smile to the last moment. 

He speaks no more. He breathes no more. The heart throbs wildly, thenstops dead like a foundered horse. 

Mercier is dead. The pupils of his eyes are solemnly distended upon aglassy abyss. All is over. I have not saved him. . . . 

Then from those dead eyes great tears ooze slowly and flow upon hischeeks. I see his features contract as if to weep throughout eternity. 

I keep the dead hand still clasped in mine for several long minutes. 

VERDUN

FEBRUARY-APRIL 1916

We were going northward by forced marches, through a France that waslike a mournful garden planted with crosses. We were no longer in doubtas to our appointed destination; every day since we had disembarked atB---- our orders had enjoined us to hasten our advance to the fightingunits of the Army Corps. This Army Corps was contracting, and drawingitself together hurriedly, its head already in the thick of the fray, its tail still winding along the roads, across the battle-field of theMarne. 

February was closing in, damp and icy, with squalls of sleet, under asullen, hideous sky, lowering furiously down to the level of theground. Everywhere there were graves, uniformly decent, or ratheraccording to pattern, showing a shield of tri-colour or black andwhite, and figures. Suddenly, we came upon immense flats, whence thecrosses stretched out their arms between the poplars like menstruggling to save themselves from being engulfed. Many ancientvillages, humble, irremediable ruins. And yet here and there, perchedupon these, frail cabins of planks and tiles, sending forth thinthreads of smoke, and emitting a timid light, in an attempt to beginlife again as before, on the same spot as before. Now and again wechanced upon a hamlet which the hurricane had passed by almostcompletely, full to overflowing with the afflux of neighbouringpopulations. 

Beyond P----, our advance, though it continued to be rapid, became verydifficult, owing to the confluence of convoys and troops. The mainroads, reserved for the military masses which were under the necessityof moving rapidly, arriving early, and striking suddenly, were barredto us. From every point of the horizon disciplined multitudesconverged, with their arsenal of formidable implements, rolling alongin an atmosphere of benzine and hot oil. Through this ordered mass, ourconvoys threaded their way tenaciously and advanced. We could see onthe hill sides, crawling like a clan of migrating ants, stretcher-bearers and their dogs drawing handcarts for the wounded, then the columns of orderlies, muddy and exhausted, then theambulances, which every week of war loads a little more heavily, dragged along by horses in a steam of sweat. 

From time to time, the whole train halted at some cross-road, and theambulances allowed more urgent things to pass in front of them--thingsdesigned to kill, sturdy grey mortars borne along post haste in ametallic rumble. 

A halt, a draught of wine mingled with rain, a few minutes to chokeover a mouthful of stale bread, and we were off again, longing for thenext halt, for a dry shelter, for an hour of real sleep. 

Soon after leaving C---- we began to meet fugitives. This complicatedmatters very much, and the spectacle began to show an odious likenessto the scenes of the beginning of the war, the scenes of the greatretreat. 

Keeping along the roadsides, the by-roads, the field-paths, they werefleeing from the Verdun district, whence they had been evacuated byorder. They were urging on miserable old horses, drawing frail carts, their wheels sunk in the ruts up to the nave, loaded with mattressesand eiderdowns, with appliances for eating and sleeping, and sometimestoo, with cages in which birds were twittering. On they went, fromvillage to village, seeking an undiscoverable lodging, but notcomplaining, saying merely:

"You are going to Verdun? We have just come from X----. We were orderedto leave. It is very difficult to find a place to settle down in. "

Women passed. Two of them were dragging a little baby-carriage in whichan infant lay asleep. One of them was quite young, the other old. Theyheld up their skirts out of the mud. They were wearing little townshoes, and every minute they sank into the slime like ourselves, sometimes above their ankles. 

All day long we encountered similar processions. I do not rememberseeing one of these women weep; but they seemed terrified, and mortallytired. 

Meanwhile, the sound of the guns became fuller and more regular. Allthe roads we caught sight of in the country seemed to be bearing theirload of men and of machines. Here and there a horse which had succumbedat its task lay rotting at the foot of a hillock. A subdued roar roseto the ear, made up of trampling hoofs, of grinding wheels, of the buzzof motors, and of a multitude talking and eating on the march. 

Suddenly we debouched at the edge of a wood upon a height whence wecould see the whole battle-field. It was a vast expanse of plains andslopes, studded with the grey woods of winter. Long trails of smokefrom burning buildings settled upon the landscape. And other trails, minute and multi-coloured, rose from the ground wherever projectileswere raining. Nothing more: wisps of smoke, brief flashes visible evenin broad daylight, and a string of captive balloons, motionless andobservant witnesses of all. 

But we were already descending the incline and the various planes ofthe landscape melted one after the other. As we were passing over abridge, I saw in a group of soldiers a friend I had not met since thebeginning of the war. We could not stop, so he walked along with me fora while, and we spent these few minutes recalling the things of thepast. Then as he left me we embraced, though we had never done so intimes of peace. 

Night was falling. Knowing that we were now at our last long lap, weencouraged the worn-out men. At R---- I lost touch with my formation. Ihalted on the roadside, calling aloud into the darkness. An artillerytrain passed, covering me with mud to my eyes. Finally, I picked up myfriends, and we marched on through villages illumined by the camp fireswhich were flickering under a driving rain, through a murky countrywhich the flash of cannon suddenly showed to be covered with amultitude of men, of horses, and of martial objects. 

It was February 27. Between ten and eleven at night we arrived at ahospital installed in some wooden sheds, and feverishly busy. We wereat B----, a miserable village on which next day the Germans launchedsome thirty monster-shells, yet failed to kill so much as a mouse. 

The night was spent on straw, to the stentorian snores of fifty menovercome by fatigue. Then reveille, and again, liquid mud over theankles. As the main road was forbidden to our ambulances there was anexcited discussion as a result of which we separated: the vehicles togo in search of a by-way, and we, the pedestrians, to skirt the roadson which long lines of motor-lorries, coming and going, passed eachother in haste like the carriages of an immense train. 

We had known since midnight where we were to take up our quarters; thesuburb of G---- was only an hour's march further on. In the fields, right and left, were bivouacs of colonial troops with muddy helmets;they had come back from the firing line, and seemed strangely quiet. Infront of us lay the town, half hidden, full of crackling sounds andechoes. Beyond, the hills of the Meuse, on which we could distinguishthe houses of the villages, and the continuous rain of machine-gunbullets. We skirted a meadow strewn with forsaken furniture, beds, chests, a whole fortune which looked like the litter of a hospital. Atlast we arrived at the first houses, and we were shown the place wherewe were expected. 

There were two brick buildings of several storeys, connected by aglazed corridor; the rest of the enclosure was occupied by woodensheds. Behind lay orchards and gardens, the first houses of the suburb. In front, the wall of a park, a meadow, a railway track, and La Route, the wonderful and terrible road that enters the town at this very point. 

Groups of lightly wounded men were hobbling towards the hospital; theincessant rush of motors kept up the feverish circulation of ademolished ant-hill. 

As we approached the buildings, a doctor came out to meet us. 

"Come, come. There's work enough for a month. "

It was true. The effluvium and the moans of several hundreds of woundedmen greeted us. Ambulance No----, which we had come to relieve, hadbeen hard at it since the night before, without having made muchvisible progress. Doctors and orderlies, their faces haggard from anight of frantic toil, came and went, choosing among the heaps ofwounded, and tended two while twenty more poured in. 

While waiting for our material, we went over the buildings. But a fewdays before, contagious diseases had been treated here. A hastydisinfection had left the wards reeking with formaline which rasped thethroat without disguising the sickly stench of the crowded sufferers. They were huddled round the stoves in the rooms, lying upon the beds ofthe dormitories, or crouching on the flags of the passages. 

In each ward of the lower storey there were thirty or forty men ofevery branch of the service, moaning and going out from time to time tocrawl to the latrines, or, mug in hand, to fetch something to drink. 

As we explored further, the scene became more terrible; in the backrooms and in the upper building a number of severely wounded men hadbeen placed, who began to howl as soon as we entered. Many of them hadbeen there for several days. The brutality of circumstances, the reliefof units, the enormous sum of work, all combined to create one of thosesituations which dislocate and overwhelm the most willing service. 

We opened a door, and the men who were lying within began to scream atthe top of their voices. Some, lying on their stretchers on the floor, seized us by the legs as we passed, imploring us to attend to them. Afew bewildered orderlies hurried hither and thither, powerless to meetthe needs of this mass of suffering. Every moment I felt my coatseized, and heard a voice saying:

"I have been here four days. Dress my wounds, for God's sake. "

And when I answered that I would come back again immediately, the poorfellow began to cry. 

"They all say they will come back, but they never do. "

Occasionally a man in delirium talked to us incoherently as we movedalong. Sometimes we went round a quiet bed to see the face of thesufferer, and found only a corpse. 

Each ward we inspected revealed the same distress, exhaled the sameodour of antiseptics and excrements, for the orderlies could not alwaysget to the patient in time, and many of the men relieved themselvesapparently unconcerned. 

I remember a little deserted room in disorder, on the table a bowl ofcoffee with bread floating in it; a woman's slippers on the floor, andin a corner, toilet articles and some strands of fair hair. . . . Iremember a corner where a wounded man suffering from meningitis, calledout unceasingly: 27, 28, 29 . . . 27, 28, 29 . . . A prey to a strangeobsession of numbers. I see a kitchen where a soldier was plucking awhite fowl . . . I see an Algerian non-commissioned officer pacing thecorridor. . . . 

Towards noon, the head doctor arrived followed by my comrades, and ourvehicles. With him I made the round of the buildings again while theywere unpacking our stores. I had got hold of a syringe, while waitingfor a knife, and I set to work distributing morphia. The task before usseemed immense, and every minute it increased. We began to divide ithastily, to assign to each his part. The cries of the sufferers muffledthe sound of a formidable cannonade. An assistant at my side, whom Iknew to be energetic and resolute, muttered between his teeth: "No! no!Anything rather than war!"

But we had first to introduce some order into our Inferno. 

In a few hours this order appeared and reigned. We were exhausted bydays of marching and nights of broken sleep, but men put off theirpacks and set to work with a silent courage that seemed to exalt eventhe least generous natures. Our first spell lasted for thirty-sixhours, during which each one gave to the full measure of his powers, without a thought of self. 

Four operation-wards had been arranged. The wounded were brought inunceasingly, and a grave and prudent mind pronounced upon the state ofeach, upon his fate, his future. . . . Confronted by the overwhelmingflood of work to be done, the surgeon, before seizing the knife, had tomeditate deeply, and make a decision as to the sacrifice which wouldensure life, or give some hope of life. In a moment of effectivethought, he had to perceive and weigh a man's whole existence, thenact, with method and audacity. 

As soon as one wounded man left the ward, another was brought in; whilethe preparations for the operation were being made, we went to chooseamong and classify the patients beforehand, for many needed nothingmore; they had passed beyond human aid, and awaited, numb andunconscious, the crowning mercy of death. 

The word "untransportable" once pronounced, directed all our work. Thewounded capable of waiting a few hours longer for attention, and ofgoing elsewhere for it were removed. But when the buzz of the motorswas heard, every one wanted to go, and men begging to be taken awayentered upon their death agony as they assured us they felt quitestrong enough to travel. . . . 

Some told us their histories; the majority were silent. They wanted togo elsewhere . . . And above all, to sleep, to drink. Natural wantsdominated, and made them forget the anguish of their wounds. . . . 

I remember one poor fellow who was asked if he wanted anything. . . . Hehad a terrible wound in the chest, and was waiting to be examined. Hereplied timidly that he wanted the urinal, and when the orderly hurriedto him bringing it, he was dead. 

The pressure of urgent duty had made us quite unmindful of the battleclose by, and of the deafening cannonade. However, towards evening, thebuildings trembled under the fury of the detonations. A little armouredtrain had taken up its position near us. The muzzle of a naval gunprotruded from it, and from moment to moment thrust out a broad tongueof flame with a catastrophic roar. 

The work was accelerated at the very height of the uproar. Rivers ofwater had run along the corridors, washing down the mud, the blood andthe refuse of the operation-wards. The men who had been operated onwere carried to beds on which clean sheets had been spread. The openwindows let in the pure, keen air, and night fell on the hillsides ofthe Meuse, where the tumult raged and lightnings flashed. 

Sometimes a wounded man brought us the latest news of the battle. Between his groans, he described the incredible bombardment, theobstinate resistance, the counter-attacks at the height of thehurly-burly. 

All these simple fellows ended their story with the same words, surprising words at such a moment of suffering:

"They can't get through now. . . . 

Then they began to moan again. 

During the terrible weeks of the battle, it was from the lips of thesetortured men that we heard the most amazing words of hope andconfidence, uttered between two cries of anguish. 

The first night passed under this stress and pressure. The morningfound us face to face with labours still vast, but classified, divided, and half determined. 

A superior officer came to visit us. He seemed anxious. 

"They have spotted you, " he said. "I hope you mayn't have to work uponeach other. You will certainly be bombarded at noon. "

We had forgotten this prophecy by the time it was fulfilled. 

About noon, the air was rent by a screeching whistle, and some dozenshells fell within the hospital enclosure, piercing one of thebuildings, but sparing the men. This was the beginning of an irregularbut almost continuous bombardment, which was not specially directedagainst us, no doubt, but which threatened us incessantly. 

No cellars. Nothing but thin walls. The work went on. 

On the third day a lull enabled us to complete our organisation. Theenemy was bombarding the town and the lines persistently. Our artilleryreplied, shell for shell, in furious salvos; a sort of thunderous wallrose around us which seemed to us like a rampart. . . . The afflux ofwounded had diminished. We had just received men who had been fightingin the open country, as in the first days of the war, but under a hailof projectiles hitherto reserved for the destruction of fortresses. Ourcomrade D---- arrived from the battlefield on foot, livid, supportinghis shattered elbow. He stammered out a tragic story: his regiment hadheld its ground under a surging tide of fire; thousands of huge shellshad fallen in a narrow ravine, and he had seen limbs hanging in thethicket, a savage dispersal of human bodies. The men had held theirground, and then had fought. . . . 

A quarter of an hour after his arrival D----, refreshed andstrengthened, was contemplating the big wound in his arm on theoperating table, and talking calmly of his ruined future. . . . 

Towards the evening of this day, we were able to go out of thebuilding, and breathe the unpolluted air for a few minutes. 

The noise reigned supreme, as silence reigns elsewhere. We wereimpregnated, almost intoxicated with it. . . . 

A dozen of those captive balloons which the soldiers call "sausages"formed an aerial semi-circle and kept watch. 

On the other side of the hills the German balloons also watched in thepurple mist to the East. 

Night came, and the balloons remained faithfully at their posts. Wewere in the centre of a circus of fire, woven by all the lightnings ofthe cannonade. To the south-west, however, a black breach opened, andone divined a free passage there towards the interior of the countryand towards silence. A few hundred feet from us, a cross-roadcontinually shelled by the enemy echoed to the shock of projectilesbattering the ground like hammers on an anvil. We often found at ourfeet fragments of steel still hot, which in the gloom seemed slightlyphosphorescent. 

From this day forth, a skilful combination of our hours and our meansenabled us to take short spells of rest in turn. However, for a hundredreasons sleep was impossible to me, and for several weeks I forgot whatit was to slumber. 

I used to retire, then, from time to time to the room set apart for myfriend V---- and myself, and lie down on a bed, overcome by a fatiguethat verged on stupefaction; but the perpetual clatter of sabots andshoes in the passage kept the mind alert and the eyes open. The chorusof the wounded rose in gusts; there were always in the adjoining wardssome dozen men wounded in the head, and suffering from meningitis, which provoked a kind of monotonous howling; there were men wounded inthe abdomen, and crying out for the drink that was denied them; therewere the men wounded in the chest, and racked by a low cough chokedwith blood . . . And all the rest who lay moaning, hoping for animpossible repose. . . . 

Then I would get up and go back to work, haunted by the terrible fearthat excess of fatigue might have made my eye less keen, my hand lesssteady than imperious duty required. 

At night more especially, the bombardment was renewed, in hurricanegusts. 

The air, rent by projectiles, mewed like a furious cat; the detonationscame closer, then retired methodically, like the footsteps of a gianton guard around us, above us, upon us. 

Every morning the orderlies took advantage of a moment of respite torun and inspect the new craters, and unearth the fuses of shells. . . . Ithought of the delightful phrase of assistant-surgeon M---- whom we hadattended for a wound on the head, and who said to me as I was takinghim back to bed, and we heard the explosions close by:

"Oh, the marmites (big shells) always fall short of one. "

But to a great many of the wounded, the perpetual uproar wasintolerable. They implored us with tears to send them somewhere else;those we kept were, as a fact, unable to bear removal; we had to soothethem and keep them, in spite of everything. Some, overcome by fatigue, slept all day; others showed extraordinary indifference, perhaps due toa touch of delirium, like the man with a wound in the abdomen which Iwas dressing one morning, and who when he saw me turn my head at thesound of an explosion which ploughed up a neighbouring field, assuredme quietly that "those things weren't dangerous. "

One night a policeman ran in with his face covered with blood. 

He was waving a lantern which he used to regulate the wheeled traffic, and he maintained that the enemy had spotted his lamp and had pepperedhim with bullets. As a fact, he had only some slight scratches. He wentoff, washed and bandaged, but only to come back to us the next daydead. A large fragment of iron had penetrated his eye. 

There was an entrance ward, where we sorted the cases. Ten times a daywe thought we had emptied this reservoir of misery; but we always foundit full again, paved with muddy stretchers on which men lay, pantingand waiting. 

Opposite to this ante-room was a clearing ward; it seemed less dismalthan the other, though it was just as bare, and not any lighter; butthe wounded there were clean; they had been operated on, they worewhite bandages, they had been comforted with hot drinks and with allsorts of hopes, for they had already escaped the first summons of Death. 

Between these two rooms, a clerk lived in the draught, the victim of anaccumulation of indispensable and stupefying documents. 

In the beginning, the same man sat for three days and three nightschained to this ungrateful task until at last we saw him, his faceconvulsed, almost mad after unremittingly labelling all this sufferingwith names and figures. 

The first days of March were chilly, with alternations of snow andsunshine. When the air was pure, we heard it vibrate with the life ofaeroplanes and echo to their contests. The dry throb of machine-guns, the incessant scream of shrapnel formed a kind of crackling dome overour heads. The German aeroplanes overwhelmed the environs with bombswhich gave a prolonged whistle before tearing up the soil or gutting ahouse. One fell a few paces from the ward where I was operating on aman who had been wounded in the head. I remember the brief glance Icast outwards and the screams and headlong flight of the men standingunder the windows. 

One morning I saw an airship which was cruising over the hills of theMeuse suddenly begin to trail after it, comet-wise, a thick tail ofblack smoke, and then rush to the earth, irradiated by a burst offlame, brilliant even in the daylight. And I thought of the two men whowere experiencing this fall. 

The military situation improved daily, but the battle was no lessstrenuous. The guns used by the enemy for the destruction of menproduced horrible wounds, certainly more severe on the whole than thosewe had tended during the first twenty months of a war that has beenpitiless from its inception. All doctors must have noted the hideoussuccess achieved in a very short time, in perfecting means oflaceration. And we marvelled bitterly that man could adventure hisfrail organism through the deflagrations of a chemistry hardlydisciplined as yet, which attains and surpasses the brutality of theblind forces of Nature. We marvelled more especially that flesh sodelicate, the product and the producer of harmony, could endure suchshocks and such dilapidations without instant disintegration. 

Many men came to us with one or several limbs torn off completely, yetthey came still living . . . . Some had thirty or forty wounds, and evenmore. We examined each body systematically, passing from one saddiscovery to another. They reminded us of those derelict vessels whichlet in the water everywhere. And just because these wrecks seemedirredeemably condemned to disaster, we clung to them in the obstinatehope of bringing them into port and perhaps floating them again. 

When the pressure was greatest, it was impossible to undress the menand get them washed properly before bringing them into theoperating-ward. The problem was in these cases to isolate the work ofthe knife as far as possible from the surrounding mud, dirt and vermin:I have seen soldiers so covered with lice that the different parts ofthe dressings were invaded by them, and even the wounds. The poorcreatures apologised, as if they were in some way to blame. . . . 

At such moments patients succeeded each other so rapidly that we knewnothing of them beyond their wounds: the man was carried away, stillplunged in sleep; we had made all the necessary decisions for himwithout having heard his voice or considered his face. 

We avoided overcrowding by at once evacuating all those on whom we hadoperated as soon as they were no longer in danger of complications. Weloaded them up on the ambulances which followed one upon the otherbefore the door. Some of the patients came back a few minutes later, riddled with fragments of shell; the driver had not succeeded indodging the shells, and he was often wounded himself. In like mannerthe stretcher-bearers as they passed along the road were often hitthemselves, and were brought in on their own hand-carts. 

One evening there was a "gas warning. " Some gusts of wind arrived, bearing along an acrid odour. All the wounded were given masks andspectacles as a precaution. We hung them even on the heads of the bedswhere dying men lay . . . And then we waited. Happily, the wave spentitself before it reached us. 

A wounded man was brought in that evening with several injuries causedby a gas-shell. His eyes had quite disappeared under his swollen lids. His clothing was so impregnated with the poison that we all began tocough and weep, and a penetrating odour of garlic and citric acid hungabout the ward for some time. 

Many things we had perforce to leave to chance, and I thought, duringthis alarm, of men just operated on, and plunged in the stupor of thechloroform, whom we should have to allow to wake, and then mask themimmediately, or . . . 

Ah, well! . . . In the midst of all this unimaginable tragedy, laughterwas not quite quenched. This phenomenon is perhaps one of thecharacteristics, one of the greatnesses of our race--and in a moregeneral way, no doubt, it is an imperative need of humanity at large. 

Certain of the wounded took a pride in cracking jokes, and they did soin words to which circumstances lent a poignant picturesqueness. Thesejests drew a laugh from us which was often closely akin to tears. 

One morning, in the sorting room, I noticed a big, curly-haired fellowwho had lost a foot, and had all sorts of wounds and fractures in bothlegs. All these had been hastily bound up, clothing and all, in thehollow of the stretcher, which was stiff with blood. When I called thestretcher-bearers and contemplated this picture, the big man raisedhimself on his elbow and said:

"Please give me a cigarette. "

Then he began to smoke, smiling cheerfully and telling absurd stories. We took off one of his legs up to the thigh, and as soon as herecovered consciousness, he asked for another cigarette, and set allthe orderlies laughing. 

When, on leaving him, I asked this extraordinary man what his callingwas, he replied modestly:

"I am one of the employees of the Vichy Company. "

The orderlies in particular, nearly all simple folks, had a desire tolaugh, even when they were worn out with fatigue, which made a pretextof the slightest thing, and notably of danger. One of them, calledTailleur, a buffoon with the airs of an executioner's assistant, wouldcall out at the first explosions of a hurricane of shells:

"Number your arms and legs! Look out for your nuts! The winkles aretumbling about!"

All my little band would begin to laugh. And I had not the heart tocheck them, for their faces were drawn with fatigue, and this moment ofdoleful merriment at least prevented them from falling asleep as theystood. 

When the explosions came very close, this same Tailleur could not helpexclaiming:

"I am not going to be killed by a brick! I am going outside. "

I would look at him with a smile, and he would repeat: "As for me, I'moff, " carefully rolling a bandage the while, which he did with greatdexterity. 

His mixture of terror and swagger was a perpetual entertainment to us. One night, a hand-grenade fell out of the pocket of one of the wounded. In defiance of orders, Tailleur, who knew nothing at all about thehandling of such things, turned it over and examined it for some time, with comic curiosity and distrust. 

One day a pig intended for our consumption was killed in the pig-sty byfragments of shell. We ate it, and the finding by one of the orderliesof some bits of metal in his portion of meat gave occasion for a greatmany jests. 

For a fortnight we were unable to go beyond the hospital enclosure. Ourlongest expedition was to the piece of waste ground which had beenallotted to us for a burial ground, a domain the shells were alwaysthreatening to plough up. This graveyard increased considerably. As ittakes a man eight hours to dig a grave for his brother man, one had toset a numerous gang to work all day, to ensure a place for each corpse. 

Sometimes we went into the wooden shed which served as our mortuary. Pere Duval, the oldest of our orderlies, sewed there all day, makingshrouds of coarse linen for "his dead. "

They were laid in the earth carefully, side by side, their feettogether, their hands crossed on their breasts, when indeed they stillpossessed hands and feet. . . . Duval also looked after the human debris, and gave it decent sepulture. 

Thus our function was not only to tend the living, but also to honourthe dead. The care of what was magniloquently termed their "estate"fell to our manager, S----. It was he who put into a little canvas bagall the papers and small possessions found on the victims. He devoteddays and nights to a kind of funereal bureaucracy, inevitable evenunder the fire of the enemy. His occupation, moreover, was not exemptfrom moral difficulties. Thus he found in the pocket of one dead man awoman's card which it was impossible to send on to his family, and inanother case, a collection of songs of such a nature that after duedeliberation it was decided to burn them. 

Let us purify the memories of our martyrs!

We had several German wounded to attend. One of these, whose leg I hadto take off, overwhelmed me with thanks in his native tongue; he hadlain for six days on ground over which artillery played unceasingly, and contemplated his return to life and the care bestowed on him with akind of stupefaction. 

Another, who had a shattered arm, gave us a good deal of trouble by hisamazing uncleanliness. Before giving him the anaesthetic, the orderlytook from his mouth a set of false teeth, which he confessed he had notremoved for several months, and which exhaled an unimaginable stench. 

I remember, too, a little fair-haired chap of rather chilly demeanour, who suddenly said "Good-bye" to me with lips that quivered like thoseof a child about to cry. 

The interpreter from Headquarters, my friend C----, came to see themall as soon as they had got over their stupor, and interrogated themwith placid patience, comparing all their statements in order to gleansome trustworthy indication. 

Thus days and nights passed by in ceaseless toil, under a perpetualmenace, in the midst of an ever-growing fatigue which gave things thesubstance and aspects they take on in a nightmare. 

The very monotony of this existence was made up of a thousand dramaticdetails, each of which would have been an event in normal life. I stillsee, as through the mists of a dream, the orderly of a dying captainsobbing at his bedside and covering his hands with kisses. I still hearthe little lad whose life blood had ebbed away, saying to me inimploring tones: "Save me, Doctor! Save me for my mother!" . . . And Ithink a man must have heard such words in such a place to understandthem aright, I think that every day this man must gain a stricter, amore precise, a more pathetic idea of suffering and of death. 

One Sunday evening, the bombardment was renewed with extraordinaryviolence. We had just sent off General S----, who was smoking on hisstretcher, and chatting calmly and cheerfully; I was operating on aninfantryman who had deep wounds in his arms and thighs. Suddenly therewas a great commotion. A hurricane of shells fell upon the hospital. Iheard a crash which shook the ground and the walls violently, thenhurried footsteps and cries in the passage. 

I looked at the man sleeping and breathing heavily, and I almost enviedhis forgetfulness of all things, the dissolution of his being in adarkness so akin to liberating death. My task completed, I went out toview the damage. 

A shell had fallen on an angle of the building, blowing in the windowsof three wards, scattering stones in all directions, and riddling wallsand ceilings with large fragments of metal. The wounded were moaning, shrouded in acrid smoke. They were lying so close to the ground thatthey had been struck only by plaster and splinters of glass; but theshock had been so great that nearly all of them died within thefollowing hour. 

The next day it was decided that we should change our domicile, and wemade ready to carry off our wounded and remove our hospital to a pointrather more distant. It was a very clear day. In front of us, the mainroad was covered with men, whom motor vehicles were depositing ingroups every minute. We were finishing our final operations and lookingout occasionally at these men gathered in the sun, on the slopes and inthe ditches. At about one o'clock in the afternoon the air was rent bythe shriek of high explosives and some shells fell in the midst of thegroups. We saw them disperse through the yellowish smoke, and go to liedown a little farther off in the fields. Some did not even stir. Stretcher-bearers came up at once, running across the meadow, andbrought us two dead men, and nine wounded, who were laid on theoperating-table. 

As we tended them during the following hour we looked anxiously at theknots of men who remained in the open, and gradually increased, and weasked whether they would not soon go. But there they stayed, and againwe heard the dull growl of the discharge, then the whistling overhead, and the explosions of some dozen shells falling upon the men. Crowdingto the window, we watched the massacre, and waited to receive thevictims. My colleague M---- drew my attention to a soldier who wasrunning up the grassy slope on the other side of the road, and whom theshells seemed to be pursuing. 

These were the last wounded we received in the suburb of G----. Threehours afterwards, we took up the same life and the same labours again, some way off, for many weeks more. . . . 

Thus things went on, until the day when we, in our turn, were carriedoff by the automobiles of the Grand' Route, and landed on the banks ofa fair river in a village where there were trees in blossom, and wherethe next morning we were awakened by the sound of bells and the voicesof women. 

THE SACRIFICE

We had had all the windows opened. From their beds, the wounded couldsee, through the dancing waves of heat, the heights of Berru and Nogentl'Abbesse, the towers of the Cathedral, still crouching like a dyinglion in the middle of the plain of Reims, and the chalky lines of thetrenches intersecting the landscape. 

A kind of torpor seemed to hang over the battle-field. Sometimes, aperpendicular column of smoke rose up, in the motionless distance, andthe detonation reached us a little while afterwards, as if astray, andashamed of outraging the radiant silence. 

It was one of the fine days of the summer of 1915, one of those dayswhen the supreme indifference of Nature makes one feel the burden ofwar more cruelly, when the beauty of the sky seems to proclaim itsremoteness from the anguish of the human heart. 

We had finished our morning round when an ambulance drew up at theentrance. 

"Doctor on duty!"

I went down the steps. The chauffeur explained:

"There are three slightly wounded men. I am going to take on further, and then there are some severely wounded . . . "

He opened the back of his car. On one side three soldiers were seated, dozing. On the other, there were stretchers, and I saw the feet of themen lying upon them. Then, from the depths of the vehicle came a low, grave, uncertain voice which said:

"I am one of the severely wounded, Monsieur. "

He was a lad rather than a man. He had a little soft down on his chin, a well-cut aquiline nose, dark eyes to which extreme weakness gave anappearance of exaggerated size, and the grey pallor of those who havelost much blood. 

"Oh! how tired I am!" he said. 

He held on to the stretcher with both hands as he was carried up thesteps. He raised his head a little, gave a glance full of astonishment, distress, and lassitude at the green trees, the smiling hills, theglowing horizon, and then he found himself inside the house. 

Here begins the story of Gaston Leglise. It is a modest story and avery sad story; but indeed, are there any stories now in the world thatare not sad?

I will tell it day by day, as we lived it, as it is graven in mymemory, and as it is graven in your memory and in your flesh, my friendLeglise. 

Leglise only had a whiff of chloroform, and he fell at once into asleep closely akin to death. 

"Let us make haste, " said the head doctor. "We shall have the poor boydying on the table. "

Then he shook his head, adding:

"Both knees! Both knees! What a future!"

The burden of experience is a sorrowful one. It is always sorrowful tohave sufficient memory to discern the future. 

Small splinters from a grenade make very little wounds in a man's legs;but great disorders may enter by way of those little wounds, and theknee is such a complicated, delicate marvel!

Corporal Leglise is in bed now. He breathes with difficulty, andcatches his breath now and again like a person who has been sobbing. Helooks about him languidly, and hardly seems to have made up his mind tolive. He contemplates the bottle of serum, the tubes, the needles, allthe apparatus set in motion to revive his fluttering heart, and heseems bowed down by grief. He wants something to drink, but he must nothave anything yet; he wants to sleep, but we have to deny sleep tothose who need it most; he wants to die perhaps, and we will not lethim. 

He sees again the listening post where he spent the night, in advanceof all his comrades. He sees again the narrow doorway bordered bysandbags through which he came out at dawn to breathe the cold air andlook at the sky from the bottom of the communication-trench. All wasquiet, and the early summer morning was sweet even in the depths of thetrench. But some one was watching and listening for the faint sound ofhis footsteps. An invisible hand hurled a bomb. He rushed back to thedoor; but his pack was on his back, and he was caught in the aperturelike a rat in a trap. The air was rent by the detonation, and his legswere rent, like the pure air, like the summer morning, like the lovelysilence. 

The days pass, and once more, the coursing blood begins to make thevessels of the neck throb, to tinge the lips, and give depth andbrilliance to the eye. 

Death, which had overrun the whole body like an invader, retired, yielding ground by degrees; but it has halted now, and makes a stand atthe legs; these it will not relinquish; it demands something by way ofspoil; it will not be baulked of its prey entirely. 

We fight for the portion Death has chosen. The wounded Corporal lookson at our labours and our efforts, like a poor man who has placed hiscause in the hands of a knight, and who can only be a spectator of thecombat, can only pray and wait. 

We shall have to give the monster a share; one of the legs must go. Nowanother struggle begins with the man himself. Several times a day I goand sit by his bed. All our attempts at conversation break down one byone. We always end in the same silence and anxiety. To-day Leglise saidto me:

"Oh! I know quite well what you're thinking about!"

As I made no answer, he intreated:

"Perhaps we could wait a little longer? Perhaps to-morrow I may bebetter . . . "

Then suddenly, in great confusion:

"Forgive me. I do trust you all. I know what you do is necessary. Butperhaps it will not be too late in two or three days. . . . "

Two or three days! We will see to-morrow. 

The nights are terribly hot; I suffer for his sake. 

I come to see him in the evening for the last time, and encourage himto sleep. But his eyes are wide open in the night and I feel that theyare anxiously fixed on mine. 

Fever makes his voice tremble. 

"How can I sleep with all the things I am thinking about?"

Then he adds faintly:

"Must you? Must you?"

The darkness gives me courage, and I nod my head: "Yes!"

As I finish his dressings, I speak from the depths of my heart:

"Leglise, we will put you to sleep to-morrow. We will make anexamination without letting you suffer, and we will do what isnecessary. "

"I know quite well that you will take it off. "

"We shall do what we must do. "

I divine that the corners of his mouth are drawn down a little, andthat his lips are quivering. He thinks aloud:

"If only the other leg was all right!"

I have been thinking of that too, but I pretend not to have heard. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 

I spend part of the afternoon sewing pieces of waterproof stufftogether. He asks me:

"What are you doing?"

"I am making you a mask, to give you ether. "

"Thank you; I can't bear the smell of chloroform. "

I answer "Yes, that's why. " The real reason is that we are not sure hecould bear the brutal chloroform, in his present state. 

Leglise's leg was taken off at the thigh this morning. He was stillunconscious when we carried him into the dark room to examine his otherleg under the X-rays. 

He was already beginning to moan and to open his eyes, and theradiographer was not hurrying. I did all I could to hasten thebusiness, and to get him back into his bed. Thus he regainedconsciousness in bright sunshine. 

What would he, who once again was so close to the dark kingdom, havethought if he had awakened in a gloom peopled by shadows, full ofwhisperings, sparks and flashes of light?

As soon as he could speak, he said to me:

"You have cut off my leg?"

I made a sign. His eyes filled, and as his head was low, the greattears trickled on to the pillow. 

To-day he is calmer. The first dressings were very painful. He lookedat the raw, bloody, oozing stump, trembling, and said:

"It looks pretty horrible!"

We took so many precautions that now he is refreshed for a few hours. 

"They say you are to have the Military Medal, " the head doctor told him. 

Leglise confided to me later, with some hesitation:

"I don't suppose they would really give me the medal!"

"And why not?"

"I was punished; one of my men had some buttons off his overcoat. "

Oh, my friend, scrupulous lad, could I love my countrymen if they couldremember those wretched buttons for an instant?

"My men!" he said gravely. I look at his narrow chest, his thin face, his boyish forehead with the serious furrow on it of one who acceptsall responsibilities, and I do not know how to show him my respect andaffection. 

Leglise's fears were baseless. General G---- arrived just now. I methim on the terrace. His face pleased me. It was refined and intelligent. 

"I have come to see Corporal Leglise, " he said. 

I took him into the ward, full of wounded men, and he at once wenttowards Leglise unhesitatingly, as if he knew him perfectly. 

"How are you?" he asked, taking the young man's hand. 

"Mon General, they've cut off my leg . . . "

"Yes, yes, I know, my poor fellow. And I have brought you the MilitaryMedal. "

He pinned it on to Leglise's shirt, and kissed my friend on bothcheeks, simply and affectionately. 

Then he talked to him again for a few minutes. 

I was greatly pleased. Really, this General is one of the right sort. 

The medal has been wrapped in a bit of muslin, so that the flies maynot soil it, and hung on the wall over the bed. It seems to be watchingover the wounded man, to be looking on at what is happening. Unfortunately, what it sees is sad enough. The right leg, the only leg, is giving us trouble now. The knee is diseased, it is in a very badstate, and all we have done to save it seems to have been in vain. Thena sore has appeared on the back, and then another sore. Every morning, we pass from one misery to another, telling the beads of suffering indue order. 

So a man does not die of pain, or Leglise would certainly be dead. Isee him still, opening his eyes desperately and checking the screamthat rises to his lips. Oh! I thought indeed that he was going to die. But his agony demands full endurance; it does not even stupefy those itassails. 

I call on every one for help. 

"Genest, Barrassin, Prevot, come, all of you. "

Yes, let ten of us do our best if necessary, to support Leglise, tohold him, to soothe him. A minute of his endurance is equal to tenyears of such effort as ours. 

Alas! were there a hundred of us he would still have to bear theheaviest burden alone. 

All humanity at this hour is bearing a very cruel burden. Every minuteaggravates its sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its aid?

We made an examination of the wounded man, together with our chief, whomuttered almost inaudibly between his teeth:

"He must be prepared for another sacrifice. "

Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely consummated. 

But Leglise understood. He no longer weeps. He has the weary andsomewhat bewildered look of the man who is rowing against the storm. Isteal a look at him, and he says at once in a clear, calm, resolutevoice:

"I would much rather die. "

I go into the garden. It is a brilliant morning, but I can see nothing, I want to see nothing. I repeat as I walk to and fro:

"He would much rather die. "

And I ask despairingly whether he is not right perhaps. 

All the poplars rustle softly. With one voice, the voice of Summeritself, they say: "No! No! He is not right!"

A little beetle crosses the path before me. I step on itunintentionally, but it flies away in desperate haste. It too hasanswered in its own way: "No, really, your friend is not right. "

"Tell him he is wrong, " sing the swarm of insects that buzz about thelime-tree. 

And even a loud roar from the guns that travels across the landscapeseems to say gruffly: "He is wrong! He is wrong!"

During the evening the chief came back to see Leglise, who said to himwith the same mournful gravity:

"No, I won't, Monsieur, I would rather die. "

We go down into the garden, and the chief says a strange thing to me:

"Try to convince him. I begin at last to feel ashamed of demanding sucha sacrifice from him. "

And I too . . . Am I not ashamed?

I consult the warm, star-decked night; I am quite sure now that he iswrong, but I don't know how to tell him so. What can I offer him inexchange for the thing I am about to ask him? Where shall I find thewords that induce a man to live? Oh you, all things around me, tell me, repeat to me that it is sweet to live, even with a body so grievouslymutilated. 

This morning I extracted a little projectile from one of his wounds. Hesecretly concluded that this would perhaps make the great operationunnecessary, and it hurt me to see his joy. I could not leave him thissatisfaction. 

The struggle began again; this time it was desperate. For we have notime to lose. Every hour of delay exhausts our man further. A few daysmore, and there will be no choice open to him: only death, after a longordeal. . . . 

He repeats:

"I am not afraid, but I would rather die. "

Then I talk to him as if I were the advocate of Life. Who gave me thisright? Who gave me eloquence? The things I said were just the rightthings, and they came so readily that now and then I was afraid ofholding out so sure a promise of a life I am not certain I canpreserve, of guaranteeing a future that is not in man's hands. 

Gradually, I feel his resistance weakening. There is something inLeglise which involuntarily sides with me and pleads with me. There aremoments when he does not know what to say, and formulates trivialobjections, just because there are others so much weightier. 

"I live with my mother, " he says. "I am twenty years old. What work isthere for a cripple? Ought I to live to suffer poverty and misery?"

"Leglise, all France owes you too much, she would blush not to pay herdebt. "

And I promise again, in the name of our country, sure that she willnever fall short of what I undertake for her. The whole French nationis behind me at this moment, silently ratifying my promise. 

We are at the edge of the terrace; evening has come. I hold his burningwrist in which the feeble pulse beats with exhausted fury. The night isso beautiful, so beautiful! Rockets rise above the hills, and fallslowly bathing the horizon in silvery rays. The lightning of the gunsflashes furtively, like a winking eye. In spite of all this, in spiteof war, the night is like waters dark and divine. Leglise breathes itin to his wasted breast in long draughts, and says:

"Oh, I don't know, I don't know! . . . Wait another day, please, please. . . . "

We waited three whole days, and then Leglise gave in. "Well, do whatyou must. Do what you like. "

On the morning of the operation, he asked to be carried down to theward by the steps into the park. I went with him, and I saw him lookingat all things round him, as if taking them to witness. 

If only, only it is not too late!

Again he was laid on the table. Again we cut through flesh and bones. The second leg was amputated at the thigh. 

I took him in my arms to lay him on his bed, and he was so light, solight. . . . 

This time when he woke he asked no question. But I saw his handsgroping to feel where his body ended. 

A few days have passed since the operation. We have done all it washumanly possible to do, and Leglise comes back to life with a kind ofbewilderment. 

"I thought I should have died, " he said to me this morning, while I wasencouraging him to eat. 

He added:

"When I went down to the operation-ward, I looked well at everything, and I thought it was for the last time. "

"Look, dear boy. Everything is just the same, just as beautiful asever. "

"Oh!" he says, going back to his memories, "I had made up my mind todie. "

To make up one's mind to die is to take a certain resolution, in thehope of becoming quieter, calmer, and less unhappy. The man who makesup his mind to die severs a good many ties, and indeed actually dies tosome extent. 

With secret anxiety, I say gently, as if I were asking a question:

"It is always good to eat, to drink, to breathe, to see the light. . . . "

He does not answer. He is dreaming. I spoke too soon. I go away, stillanxious. 

We have some bad moments yet, but the fever gradually abates. I have animpression that Leglise bears his pain more resolutely, like one whohas given all he had to give, and fears nothing further. 

When I have finished the dressing, I turned him over on his side, toease his sore back. He smiled for the first time this morning, saying:

"I have already gained something by getting rid of my legs. I can lieon my side now. "

But he cannot balance himself well; he is afraid of falling. 

Think of him, and you will be afraid with him and for him. 

Sometimes he goes to sleep in broad daylight and dozes for a fewminutes. He has shrunk to the size of a child. I lay a piece of gauzeover his face, as one does to a child, to keep the flies off. I bringhim a little bottle of Eau de Cologne and a fan, they help him to bearthe final assaults of the fever. 

He begins to smoke again. We smoke together on the terrace, where Ihave had his bed brought. I show him the garden and say: "In a fewdays, I will carry you down into the garden. "

He is anxious about his neighbours, asks their names, and inquiresabout their wounds. For each one he has a compassionate word that comesfrom the depths of his being. He says to me:

"I hear that little Camus is dead. Poor Camus!"

His eyes fill with tears. I was almost glad to see them. He had notcried for so long. He adds:

"Excuse me, I used to see Camus sometimes. It's so sad. "

He becomes extraordinarily sensitive. He is touched by all he seesaround him, by the sufferings of others, by their individualmisfortunes. He vibrates like an elect soul, exalted by a great crisis. 

When he speaks of his own case, it is always to make light of hismisfortune:

"Dumont got it in the belly. Ah, it's lucky for me that none of myorgans are touched; I can't complain. "

I watch him with admiration, but I am waiting for something more, something more. . . . 

His chief crony is Legrand. 

Legrand is a stonemason with a face like a young girl. He has lost abig piece of his skull. He has also lost the use of language, and weteach him words, as to a baby. He is beginning to get up now, and hehovers round Leglise's bed to perform little services for him. He triesto master his rebellious tongue, but failing in the attempt, he smiles, and expresses himself with a limpid glance, full of intelligence. 

Leglise pities him too:

"It must be wretched not to be able to speak. "

To-day we laughed, yes, indeed, we laughed heartily, Leglise, theorderlies and I. 

We were talking of his future pension while the dressings were beingprepared, and someone said to him:

"You will live like a little man of means. "

Leglise looked at his body and answered:

"Oh, yes, a little man, a very little man. "

The dressing went off very well. To make our task easier, Leglisesuggested that he should hold on to the head of the bed with both handsand throw himself back on his shoulders, holding his stumps up in theair. It was a terrible, an unimaginable sight; but he began to laugh, and the spectacle became comic. We all laughed. But the dressing waseasy and was quickly finished. 

The stumps are healing healthily. In the afternoon, he sits up in bed. He begins to read and to smoke, chatting to his companions. 

I explain to him how he will be able to walk with artificial legs. Hejokes again:

"I was rather short before; but now I can be just the height I choose. "

I bring him some cigarettes that had been sent me for him, some sweetsand dainties. He makes a sign that he wants to whisper to me, and saysvery softly:

"I have far too many things. But Legrand is very badly off; his home isin the invaded district, and he has nothing, they can't send himanything. "

I understand. I come back presently with a packet in which there aretobacco, some good cigarettes, and also a little note. . . . 

"Here is something for Legrand. You must give it to him. I'm off. "

In the afternoon I find Leglise troubled and perplexed. 

"I can't give all this to Legrand myself, he would be offended. "

So then we have to devise a discreet method of presentation. 

It takes some minutes. He invents romantic possibilities. He becomesflushed, animated, interested. 

"Think, " I say, "find a way. Give it to him yourself, from some one orother. "

But Leglise is too much afraid of wounding Legrand's susceptibilities. He ruminates on the matter till evening. 

The little parcel is at the head of Legrand's bed. Leglise calls myattention to it with his chin, and whispers:

"I found some one to give it to him. He doesn't know who sent it. Hehas made all sorts of guesses; it is very amusing!" Oh, Leglise, can itbe that there is still something amusing, and that it is to be kind?Isn't this alone enough to make it worth while to live?

So now we have a great secret between us. All the morning, as I comeand go in the ward, he looks at me meaningly, and smiles to himself. Legrand gravely offers me a cigarette; Leglise finds it hard not toburst out laughing. But he keeps his counsel. 

The orderlies have put him on a neighbouring bed while they make his. He stays there very quietly, his bandaged stumps in view, and sings alittle song, like a child's cradle-song. Then, all of a sudden, hebegins to cry, sobbing aloud. 

I put my arm round him and ask anxiously: "Why? What is the matter?"

Then he answers in a broken voice: "I am crying with joy andthankfulness. "

Oh! I did not expect so much. But I am very happy, much comforted. Ikiss him, he kisses me, and I think I cried a little too. 

I have wrapped him in a flannel dressing-gown, and I carry him in myarms. I go down the steps to the park very carefully, like a mothercarrying her new-born babe for the first time, and I call out: "Anarm-chair! An arm-chair. "

He clings to my neck as I walk, and says in some confusion:

"I shall tire you. "

No indeed! I am too well pleased. I would not let any one take myplace. The arm-chair has been set under the trees, near a grove. Ideposit Leglise among the cushions. They bring him a kepi. He breathesthe scent of green things, of the newly mown lawns, of the warm gravel. He looks at the facade of the mansion, and says:

"I had not even seen the place where I very nearly died. "

All the wounded who are walking about come and visit him; they almostseem to be paying him homage. He talks to them with a cordialauthority. Is he not the chief among them, in virtue of his sufferingsand his sacrifice?

Some one in the ward was talking this morning of love and marriage, anda home. 

I glanced at Leglise now and then; he seemed to be dreaming and hemurmured:

"Oh, for me, now. . . "

Then I told him something I knew: I know young girls who have sworn tomarry only a mutilated man. Well, we must believe in the vows of theseyoung girls. France is a country richer in warmth of heart than in anyother virtue. It is a blessed duty to give happiness to those who havesacrificed so much. And a thousand hearts, the generous hearts ofwomen, applaud me at this moment. 

Leglise listens, shaking his head. He does not venture to say "No. "

Leglise has not only the Military Medal, but also the War Cross. Thenotice has just come. He reads it with blushes. 

"I shall never dare to show this, " he says; "it is a good dealexaggerated. "

He hands me the paper, which states, in substance, that CorporalLeglise behaved with great gallantry under a hail of bombs, and thathis left leg has been amputated. 

"I didn't behave with great gallantry, " he says; "I was at my post, that's all. As to the bombs, I only got one. "

I reject this point of view summarily. 

"Wasn't it a gallant act to go to that advanced post, so near theenemy, all alone, at the head of all the Frenchmen? Weren't they allbehind you, to the very end of the country, right away to the Pyrenees?Did they not all rely on your coolness, your keen sight, yourvigilance? You were only hit by one bomb, but I think you might havehad several, and still be with us. And besides, the notice, far frombeing exaggerated, is really insufficient; it says you have lost a leg, whereas you have lost two! It seems to me that this fully compensatesfor anything excessive with regard to the bombs. "

"That's true!" agrees Leglise, laughing. "But I don't want to be madeout a hero. "

"My good lad, people won't ask what you think before they appreciateand honour you. It will be quite enough to look at your body. "

Then we had to part, for the war goes on, and every day there are freshwounded. 

Leglise left us nearly cured. He left with some comrades, and he wasnot the least lively of the group. 

"I was the most severely wounded man in the train, " he wrote to me, notwithout a certain pride. 

Since then, Leglise has written to me often. His letters breathe acontented calm. I receive them among the vicissitudes of the campaign;on the highways, in wards where other wounded men are moaning, infields scoured by the gallop of the cannonade. 

And always something beside me murmurs, mutely:

"You see, you see, he was wrong when he said he would rather die. "

I am convinced of it, and this is why I have told your story. You willforgive me, won't you, Leglise, my friend?

THE THIRD SYMPHONY

Every morning the stretcher-bearers brought Vize-Feldwebel Spat down tothe dressing ward, and his appearance always introduced a certain chillin the atmosphere. 

There are some German wounded whom kind treatment, suffering, or somemore obscure agency move to composition with the enemy, and who receivewhat we do for them with a certain amount of gratitude. Spat was notone of these. For weeks we had made strenuous efforts to snatch himfrom death, and then to alleviate his sufferings, without eliciting theslightest sign of satisfaction from him, or receiving the least word ofthanks. 

He could speak a little French, which he utilised strictly for hismaterial wants, to say, for instance, "A little more cotton-wool underthe foot, Monsieur, " or, "Have I any fever to-day?"

Apart from this, he always showed us the same icy face, the same pale, hard eyes, enframed by colourless lashes. We gathered, from certainindications, that the man was intelligent and well educated; but he wasobviously under the domination of a lively hatred, and a strict senseof his own dignity. 

He bore pain bravely, and like one who makes it a point of honour torepress the most excusable reactions of the martyred flesh. I do notremember ever hearing him cry out, though this would have seemed to menatural enough, and would by no means have lowered Monsieur Spat in myopinion. All I ever heard from him was a stifled moan, the dull pantingof the woodman as he swings his axe. 

One day we were obliged to give him an anaesthetic in order to makeincisions in the wounds in his leg; he turned very red and said, in atone that was almost imploring: "You won't cut it off, gentlemen, willyou?" But no sooner did he regain consciousness than he at once resumedhis attitude of stiff hostility. 

After a time, I ceased to believe mat his features could ever expressanything but this repressed animosity. I was undeceived by anunforeseen incident. 

The habit of whistling between one's teeth is a token, with me as withmany other persons, of a certain absorption. It is perhaps rather avulgar habit, but I often feel impelled to whistle, especially when Ihave a serious piece of work in hand. 

One morning accordingly, I was finishing Vize-Feldwebel Spat'sdressing, and whistling something at random. I was looking at his leg, and was paying no attention to his face, when I suddenly becamecuriously aware that the look he had fixed upon me had changed inquality, and I raised my eyes. 

Certainly, something very extraordinary had taken place: the German'sface glowed with a kind of warmth and contentment, and was so smilingand radiant that I hardly recognised it. I could scarcely believe thathe had been able to improvise this face, which was sensitive andtrustful, out of the features he generally showed us. 

"Tell me, Monsieur, " he murmured, "it's the Third Symphony, isn't it, that you are . . . What do you call it?--yes . . . Whistling. "

First, I stopped whistling. Then I answered: "Yes, I believe it is theThird Symphony"; then I remained silent and confused. 

A slender bridge had just been flung across the abyss. 

The thing lasted for a few seconds, and I was still dreaming of it whenonce more I felt an icy, irrevocable shadow falling upon me--thehostile glance of Herr Spat. 

GRACE

It is a common saying that all men are equal in the presence ofsuffering, but I know very well that this is not true. 

Auger! Auger! humble basket-maker of La Charente, who are you, you whoseem able to suffer without being unhappy? Why are you touched withgrace, whereas Gregoire is not? Why are you the prince of a world inwhich Gregoire is merely a pariah?

Kind ladies who pass through the wards where the wounded lie, and givethem cigarettes and sweet-meats, come with me. 

We will go through the large ward on the first floor, where the windowsare caressed by the boughs of chestnut-trees. I will not point outAuger, you will give him the lion's share of the cigarettes and sweetsof your own accord; but if I don't point out Gregoire, you will leavewithout, noticing him, and he will get no sweets, and will have nothingto smoke. 

It is not because of this that I call Gregoire a pariah. It is becauseof a much sadder and more intimate thing . . . Gregoire lacks endurance, he is not what we call a good patient. 

In a general way those who tend the wounded call the men who do notgive them much trouble "good patients. " Judged by this standard, everyone in the hospital will tell you that Gregoire is not a good patient. 

All day long, he lies on his left side, because of his wound, andstares at the wall. I said to him a day or two after he came:

"I am going to move you and put you over in the other corner; there youwill be able to see your comrades. "

He answered, in his dull, surly voice:

"It's not worth while. I'm all right here. "

"But you can see nothing but the wall. "

"That's quite enough. "

Scarcely have the stretcher-bearers touched his bed, when Gregoirebegins to cry out in a doleful, irritable tone:

"Ah! don't shake me like that! Ah, you mustn't touch me. "

The stretcher-bearers I give him are very gentle fellows, and he alwayshas the same: Paffin, a fat shoe-maker with a stammer, and MonsieurBouin, a professor of mathematics, with a grey beard and very precisemovements. 

They take hold of Gregoire most carefully to lay him on the stretcher. The wounded man criticises all their movements peevishly:

"Ah! don't turn me over like that. And you must hold my leg better thanthat!"

The sweat breaks out on Baffin's face. Monsieur Bouin's eye-glassesfall off. At last they bring the patient along. 

As soon as he comes into the dressing ward, Gregoire is pale andperspiring. His harsh tawny beard quivers, hair by hair. I divine allthis, and say a few words of encouragement to him from afar. 

"I shan't be long with you this morning, Gregoire. You won't have timeto say 'oof'!"

He preserves a sulky silence, full of reservations. He looks like acondemned criminal awaiting execution. He is so pre-occupied that hedoes not even answer when the sarcastic Sergeant says as he passes him:

"Ah! here's our grouser. "

At last he is laid on the table which the wounded men call the"billiard-table. "

Then, things become very trying. I feel at once that whatever I do, Gregoire will suffer. I uncover the wound in his thigh, and he screams. I wash the wound carefully, and he screams. I probe the wound, fromwhich I remove small particles of bone, very gently, and he uttersunimaginable yells. I see his tongue trembling in his open mouth. Hishands tremble in the hands that hold them, I have an impression thatevery fibre of his body trembles, that the raw flesh of the woundtrembles and retracts. In spite of my determination, this miseryaffects me, and I wonder whether I too shall begin to tremblesympathetically. I say:

"Try to be patient, my poor Gregoire. "

He replies in a voice hoarse with pain and terror: "I can't help it. "

I add, just to say something: "Courage, a little courage. "

He does not even answer, and I feel that to exhort him to show courage, is to recommend an impossible thing, as if I were to advise him to haveblack eyes instead of his pale blue ones. 

The dressing is completed in an atmosphere of general discomfort. Nothing could persuade me that Gregoire does not cordially detest me atthis moment. While they are carrying him away, I ask myself bitterlywhy Gregoire is so deficient in grace, why he cannot suffer decently?

The Sergeant says, as he sponges the table: "He's working against oneall the time. " Well, the Sergeant is wrong. Gregoire is notdeliberately hostile. Sometimes I divine, when he knits his brows, thathe is making an effort to resist suffering, to meet it with a stouterand more cheerful heart. But he does not know how to set about it. 

If you were asked to lift a railway-engine, you would perhaps make aneffort; but you would do so without confidence and without success. Soyou must not say hard things of Gregoire. 

Gregoire is unable to bear suffering, just as one is unable to talk anunknown language. And, then, it is easier to learn Chinese than tolearn the art of suffering. 

When I say that he is unable to bear suffering, I really mean that hehas to suffer a great deal more than others. . . . I know the human body, and I cannot be deceived as to certain signs. 

Gregoire begins very badly. He reminds one of those children who havesuch a terror of dogs that they are bound to be bitten. Gregoiretrembles at once. The dogs of pain throw themselves upon thisdefenceless man and pull him down. 

A great load of misery is heavy for a man to bear alone, but it issupportable when he is helped. Unfortunately Gregoire has no friends. He does nothing to obtain them, it almost seems as if he did not wantany. 

He is not coarse, noisy and foul-mouthed, like the rascal Groult whoamuses the whole ward. He is only dull and reserved. 

He does not often say "Thank you" when he is offered something, andmany touchy people take offence at this. 

When I sit down by his bed, he gives no sign of any pleasure at myvisit. I ask him:

"What was your business in civil life?"

He does not answer immediately. At last he says: "Odd jobs; I carriedand loaded here and there. "

"Are you married?"

"Yes. "

"Have you any children?"

"Yes. "

"How many?"

"Three. "

The conversation languishes. I get up and say: "Good-bye tillto-morrow, Gregoire. "

"Ah! you will hurt me again to-morrow. "

I reassure him, or at least I try to reassure him. Then, that I may notgo away leaving a bad impression, I ask:

"How did you get wounded?"

"Well, down there in the plain, with the others. . . . "

That is all. I go away. Gregoire's eyes follow me for a moment, and Icannot even say whether he is pleased or annoyed by my visit. 

Good-bye, poor Gregoire. I cross the ward and go to sit down by Auger. 

Auger is busy writing up his "book. "

It is a big ledger some one has given him, in which he notes theimportant events of his life. 

Auger writes a round schoolboy hand. In fact, he can just writesufficiently well for his needs, I might almost say for his pleasure. 

"Would you care to look at my book?" he says, and he hands it to mewith the air of a man who has no secrets. 

Auger receives many letters, and he copies them out carefully, especially when they are fine letters, full of generous sentiments. Hislieutenant, for instance, wrote him a remarkable letter. 

He also copies into his book the letters he writes to his wife and hislittle girl. Then he notes the incidents of the day: "Wound dressed at10 o'clock. The pus is diminishing. After dinner Madame la PrincesseMoreau paid us a visit, and distributed caps all round; I got a finegreen one. The little chap who had such a bad wound in the belly diedat 2 o'clock. . . . "

Auger closes his book and puts it back under his bolster. 

He has a face that it does one good to look at. His complexion is warmand fresh; his hair stiff and rather curly. He has a youthfulmoustache, a well-shaped chin, with a lively dimple in the middle, andeyes which seem to be looking out on a smiling landscape, gay withsunshine and running waters. 

"I am getting on splendidly, " he says with great satisfaction. "Wouldyou like to see Mariette?"

He lifts up the sheet, and I see the apparatus in which we have placedthe stump of his leg. It makes a kind of big white doll, which he takesin both hands with a laugh, and to which he has given the playful nameof "Mariette. "

Auger was a sapper in the Engineers. A shell broke his thigh and toreoff his foot. But as the foot was still hanging by a strip of flesh, Auger took out his pocket-knife, and got rid of it. Then he said to histerror-stricken comrades: "Well, boys, that's all right. It might havebeen worse. Now carry me somewhere out of this. "

"Did you suffer terribly?" I asked him. 

"Well, Monsieur, not as much as you might think. Honestly, it did nothurt so very, very much. Afterwards, indeed, the pain was pretty bad. "

I understand why every one is fond of Auger. It is because he isreassuring. Seeing him and listening to him one opines that sufferingis not such a horrible thing after all. Those who live far from thebattle-field, and visit hospitals to get a whiff of the war, look atAuger and go away well satisfied with everything: current events, him, and themselves. They are persuaded that the country is well defended, that our soldiers are brave, and that wounds and mutilations, thoughthey may be serious things, are not unbearable. 

Yet pain has come to Auger as to the rest. But there is a way of takingit. 

He suffers in an enlightened, intelligent, almost methodical fashion. He does not confuse issues, and complain indiscriminately. Even when inthe hands of others, he remains the man who had the courage to cut offhis own foot, and finish the work of the shrapnel. He is too modest andrespectful to give advice to the surgeon, but he offers him valuableinformation. 

He says:

"Just there you are against the bone, it hurts me very much. Ah! thereyou can scrape, I don't feel it much. Take care! You're pressing rathertoo hard. All right: you can go on, I see what it's for. . . . "

And this is how we work together. 

"What are you doing? Ah, you're washing it. I like that. It does megood. Good blood! Rub a little more just there. You don't know how ititches. Oh! if you're going to put the tube in, you must tell me, thatI may hold on tight to the table. "

So the work gets on famously. Auger will make a rapid and excellentrecovery. With him, one need never hesitate to do what is necessary. Iwanted to give him an anaesthetic before scraping the bone of his leg. He said:

"I don't suppose it will be a very terrible business. If you don'tmind, don't send me to sleep, but just do what is necessary. I will seeto the rest. "

True, he could not help making a few grimaces. Then the Sergeant saidto him:

"Would you like to learn the song of the grunting pigs?"

"How does your song go?"

The Sergeant begins in a high, shrill voice:

 Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne On entend les cochons . . . Cela prouve d'une facon certai-ai-ne Qu'ils non pas l'trooo du . . . Bouche. 

Auger begins to laugh; everybody laughs. And meanwhile we are bendingover the wounded leg and our work gets on apace. 

"Now, repeat, " says the Sergeant. 

He goes over it again, verse by verse, and Auger accompanies him. 

 Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne . . . 

Auger stops now and then to make a slight grimace. Sometimes, too, hisvoice breaks. He apologises simply:

"I could never sing in tune. "

Nevertheless, the song is learnt, more or less, and when the Generalcomes to visit the hospital, Auger says to him:

"Mon General, I can sing you a fine song. "

And he would, the rascal, if the head doctor did not look reprovinglyat him. 

It is very dismal, after this, to attend to Gregoire, and to hear himgroaning:

"Ah! don't pull like that. You're dragging out my heart. "

I point out that if he won't let us attend to him, he will become muchworse. Then he begins to cry. 

"What do I care, since I shall die anyhow?"

He has depressed the orderlies, the stretcher-bearers, everybody. Hedoes not discourage me; but he gives me a great deal of trouble. 

All you gentlemen who meet together to discuss the causes of the war, the end of the war, the using-up of effectives and the future bases ofsociety, excuse me if I do not give you my opinion on these gravequestions. I am really too much taken up with the wound of our unhappyGregoire. 

It is not satisfactory, this wound, and when I look at it, I cannotthink of anything else; the screams of the wounded man would prevent mefrom considering the conditions of the decisive battle and the resultsof the rearrangement of the map of Europe with sufficient detachment. 

Listen: Gregoire tells me he is going to die. I think and believe thathe is wrong. But he certainly will die if I do not take it upon myselfto make him suffer. He will die, because every one is forsaking him. And he has long ago forsaken himself. 

"My dear chap, " remarked Auger to a very prim orderly, "it is no doubtunpleasant to have only one shoe to put on, but it gives one a chanceof saving. And now, moreover, I only run half as much risk ofscratching my wife with my toe-nails in bed as you do. . . . "

"Quite so, " added the Sergeant; "with Mariette he will caress his goodlady, so to speak. "

Auger and the Sergeant crack jokes like two old cronies. Theembarrassed orderly, failing to find a retort, goes away laughingconstrainedly. 

I sat down by Auger, and we were left alone. 

"I am a basket-maker, " he said gravely. "I shall be able to take up mytrade again more or less. But think of workers on the land, likeGroult, who has lost a hand, and Lerondeau, with his useless leg! . . . That's really terrible!"

Auger rolls his r's in a way that gives piquancy and vigour to hisconversation. He talks of others with a natural magnanimity which comesfrom the heart, like the expression of his eyes, and rings true, likethe sound of his voice. And then again, he really need not envy anyone. Have I not said it! He is a prince. 

"I have had some very grand visitors, " he says. "Look, another ladycame a little while ago, and left me this big box of sweets. Do takeone, Monsieur, it would be a pleasure to me. And please, will you handthem round to the others, from me?"

He adds in a lower tone:

"Look under my bed. I put everything I am given there. Really, there'stoo much. I'm ashamed. There are some chaps here who never getanything, and they were brave fellows who did their duty just as wellas I did. "

It is true, there are many brave soldiers in the ward, but only oneMilitary Medal was given among them, and it came to Auger. Its arrivalwas the occasion of a regular little fete; his comrades all took partin it cordially, for strange to say, no one is jealous of Auger. Amiracle indeed! Did you ever hear of any other prince of whom no onewas jealous?

"Are you going?" said Auger. "Please just say a few words to Groult. Heis a bit of a grouser, but he likes a talk. "

Auger has given me a lesson. I will go and smoke a cigarette withGroult, and above all, I will go and see Gregoire. 

Groult, indeed, is not altogether neglected. He is an original, aperverse fellow. He is pointed out as a curious animal. He gets hisshare of presents and attention. 

But no one knows anything about Gregoire; he lies staring at the wall, and growing thinner every day, and Death seems the only person who isinterested in him. 

You shall not die, Gregoire! I vow to keep hold of you, to suffer withyou, and to endure your ill-temper humbly. You, who seem to be bearingthe misery of an entire world, shall not be miserable all alone. 

Kind ladies who come to see our wounded and give them picture-books, tri-coloured caps and sweetmeats, do not forget Gregoire, who iswretched. Above all, give him your sweetest smiles. 

You go away well pleased with yourselves because you have been generousto Auger. But there is no merit in being kind to Auger. With a singlestory, a single clasp of his hand, he gives you much more than hereceived from you. He gives you confidence; he restores your peace ofmind. 

Go and see Gregoire who has nothing but his suffering to give, and whovery nearly gave his life. 

If you go away without a smile for Gregoire, you may fear that you havenot fulfilled your task. And don't expect him to return your smile, forwhere would your liberality be in that case?

It is easy to pity Auger, who needs no pity. It is difficult to pityGregoire, and yet he is so pitiable. 

Do not forget; Auger is touched with grace; but Gregoire will be damnedif you do not hold out your hand to him. 

God Himself, who has withheld grace from the damned, must feel pity forthem. 

It is a very artless desire for equality which makes us say that allmen are equal in the presence of suffering. No! no! they are not. Andas we know nothing of Death but that which precedes and determines it, men are not even equal in the presence of Death. 

NIGHTS IN ARTOIS

I

One more glance into the dark ward, in which something begins to reignwhich is not sleep, but merely a kind of nocturnal stupor. 

The billiard-table has been pushed into a corner; it is loaded with anincoherent mass of linen, bottles, and articles of furniture. A smellof soup and excrements circulates between the stretchers, and seems toinsult the slender onyx vases that surmount the cabinet. 

And now, quickly! quickly! Let us escape on tiptoe into the open air. 

The night is clear and cold, without a breath of wind: a vast block oftransparent ice between the snow and the stars. Will it suffice tocleanse throat and lungs, nauseated by the close effluvium ofsuppurating wounds?

The snow clings and balls under our sabots. How good it would be tohave a game. . . . But we are overwhelmed by a fatigue that has become akind of exasperation. We will go to the end of the lawn. 

Here is the great trench in which the refuse of the dressing-ward, allthe residuum of infection, steams and rots. Further on we come to themusical pines, which Dalcour the miner visits every night, lantern inhand, to catch sparrows, Dalcour, the formidable Zouave, whom no onecan persuade not to carry about his stiff leg and the gaping wound inhis bandaged skull in the rain. 

Let us go as far as the wall of the graveyard, which time has caused toswell like a protuberance on the side of the park, and which is soprovidentially close at hand. 

The old Chateau looms, a stately mass, through the shadows. To-night, lamps are gleaming softly in every window. It looks like a silent, illuminated ship, the prow of which is cutting through an ice-bank. Nothing emerges from it but this quiet light. Nothing reveals thenature of its terrible freight. 

We know that in every room, in every storey, on the level of everyfloor, young mutilated bodies are ranged side by side. A hundred heartssend the over-heated blood in swift pulsations towards the sufferinglimbs. Through all these bodies the projectile in its furious coursemade its way, crushing delicate mechanisms, rending the precious organswhich make us take pleasure in walking, breathing, drinking. . . . 

Up there, this innocent joy of order no longer exists; and in order torecapture it, a hundred bodies are performing labours so slow and hardthat they call forth tears and sighs from the strongest. 

But how the murmurs of this centre of suffering are muffled by thewalls! How silently and darkly it broods in space!

Like a dressing on a large inflamed wound, the Chateau covers itscontents closely, and one sees nothing but these lamps, just such lampsas might illuminate a studious solitude, or a conversation betweenintimate friends at evening, or a love lost in self-contemplation. 

We are now walking through thickets of spindle-wood, resplendent underthe snow, and the indifference of these living things to the monstrousmisery round them makes the impotent soul that is strangling me seemodious and even ridiculous to me. In spite of all protestations ofsympathy, the mortal must always suffer alone in his flesh, and thisindeed is why war is possible. . . . 

Philippe here thinks perhaps as I do; but he and I have these thoughtsthrust on us in the same pressing fashion. Men who are sleeping twentypaces from this spot would be wakened by a cry; yet they areundisturbed by this formidable presence, inarticulate as a mollusc inthe depths of the sea. 

In despair, I stamp on the soft snow with my sabot. The winter grass itcovers subsists obstinately, and has no solidarity with anything elseon earth. Let the pain of man wear itself out; the grass will notwither. Sleep, good folks of the whole world. Those who suffer herewill not disturb your rest. 

And suddenly, beyond the woods a rocket rises and bursts against thesky, brilliant as a meteor. It means something most certainly, and itwarns some one; but its coarse ingenuity does not deceive me. Nobarbarous signal such as this could give me back confidence in my soulto-night. 

II

The little room adjoining the closet where I sleep has been set apartfor those whose cries or effluvia make them intolerable to the rest. Asit is small and encumbered, it will only admit a single stretcher, andmen are brought in there to die in turn. 

But lately, when the Chateau was reigning gracefully in the midst ofverdure, the centre of the great star of alleys piercing its groves oflimes and beeches, its owners occasionally entertained a brilliantsociety; and if they had under their roof some gay and lovelymilk-white maiden, they gave her this little room at the summit of theright wing, whence the sun may be seen rising above the forests, todream, and sleep, and adorn herself in. 

To-day, the facade of the Chateau seems to be listening, strained andanxious, to the cannonade; and the little room has become adeath-chamber. 

Madelan was the first we put there. He was raving in such a brutal anddisturbing manner, in spite of the immobility of his long, paralysedlimbs, that his companions implored us to remove him. I think Madelanneither understood nor noticed this isolation, for he was already givenover to a deeper solitude; but his incessant vociferation, after he wasdeprived of listeners, took on a strange and terrible character. 

For four days and four nights, he never ceased talking vehemently; andlistening to him, one began to think that all the life of the big bodythat was already dead, had fled in frenzy to his throat. For fournights I heard him shouting incoherent, elusive things, which seemed tobe replies to some mysterious interlocutor. 

At dawn, and from hour to hour throughout the day, I went to see himwhere he sprawled on a paillasse on the floor, like some red-hairedstricken beast, with out-stretched limbs, convulsed by spasms whichdisplaced the dirty blanket that covered him. 

He lost flesh with such incredible rapidity that he seemed to beevaporating through the gaping wound in the nape of his neck. 

Then I would speak to him, saying things that were kindly meant butfutile, because conversation is impossible between a man who is beingwhirled along by the waters of a torrent, and one who is seated amongthe rushes on the bank. Madelan did not listen to me, and he continuedhis strange colloquy with the other. He did not want us or any oneelse; he had ceased to eat or to drink, and relieved himself as he lay, asking neither help nor tendance. 

One day, the wind blew the door of the room to, and there was no key toopen it. A long ladder was put up to the window, and a pane of glasswas broken to effect an entrance. Directly this was done, Madelan washeard, continuing his dream aloud. 

He died, and was at once replaced by the man with his skull batteredin, of whom we knew nothing, because when he came to us he couldneither see nor speak, and had nothing by way of history but a red andwhite ticket, as large as the palm of a child's hand. 

This man spent only one night in the room, filling the silence withpainful eructations, and thumping on the partition which separated himfrom my bed. 

Listening alertly, with the cold air from the open window blowing on myface, I heard in turn the crowing of the cocks in the village, theirregular breathing of Philippe, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion notfar from me, and the blows and the death-rattle of the man who took solong to die. He became silent, however, in the morning, when the windbegan to drop, and the first detonation of the day boomed through thevault-like quiet of the darkness. 

Then we had as our neighbour the hospital orderly, Sergeant Gidel, whowas nearing his end, and whose cruel hiccough we had been unable toalleviate for a week past. This man knew his business, he knew themeaning of probe, of fever, of hardened abdomen. He knew too that hehad a bullet in the spinal cord. He never asked us for anything, and aswe dared not tell him lies, we were overcome by a kind of shame in hispresence. He stayed barely two days in the room, looking with dim eyesat the engravings on the walls, and the Empire bureau on which vaseswere piled. 

But what need is there to tell of all those whom this unhappy roomswallowed up and ejected?

III

We have no lights this evening. . . . We must learn to do without them. . . . I grope my way along the passages, where the wind is muttering, to thegreat staircase. Here there is a fitful lamp which makes one prefer thedarkness. I see the steps, which are white and smeared with mud, pictures and tapestries, a sumptuous scheme of decoration flooded atthe bottom by filth and desolation. As I approach the room where thewounded are lying, I hear the calm sound of their conversation. I go inquietly. They cease talking; then they begin to chat again, for nowthey know me. 

At first one can only distinguish long forms ranged upon the ground. The stretchers seem to be holding forth with human voices. One of theseis narrating:

"We were all three sitting side by side . . . Though I had told theadjutant that corner was not a good place. . . . They had just brought usa ration of soup with a little bit of meat that was all covered withwhite frost. Then bullets began to arrive by the dozen, and we avoidedthem as well as we could, and the earth flew about, and we werelaughing, because we had an idea that among all those bullets there wasnot one that would find its billet. And then they stopped firing, andwe came back to sit on the ledge. There were Chagniol and Duc and I, and I had them both to the right of me. We began to talk aboutGiromagny, and about Danjoutin, because that's the district we all camefrom, and this went on for about half an hour. And then, all of asudden, a bullet came, just a single one, but this time it was a goodone. It went through Chagniol's head, then through Duc's, and as I wasa little taller than they, it only passed through my neck. . . . "

"And then?"

"Then it went off to the devil! Chagniol fell forward on his face. Ducgot up, and ran along on all fours as far as the bend in the trench, and there he began to scratch out the earth like a rabbit, and then hedied. The blood was pouring down me right and left, and I thought itwas time for me to go. I set off running, holding a finger to each sideof my neck, because of the blood. I was thinking: just a single bullet!It's too much! It was really a mighty good one! And then I saw theadjutant. So I said to him: 'I warned you, mon adjutant, that thatcorner was not a good place!' But the blood rushed up into my mouth, and I began to run again. "

There was a silence, and I heard a voice murmur with conviction:

"YOU were jolly lucky, weren't you?"

Mulet, too, tells his story:

"They had taken our fire . . . 'That's not your fire, ' I said to him. 'Not our fire?' he said. Then the other came up and he said: 'Hold yourjaw about the fire . . . ' 'It's not yours, ' I said. Then he said: 'Youdon't know who you're talking to. ' And he turned his cap, which hadbeen inside out . . . 'Ah! I beg your pardon, ' I said, 'but I could nottell . . . ' And so they kept our fire. . . . "

Maville remarks calmly: "Yes, things like that will happen sometimes. "

Silence again. The tempest shakes the windows with a furious hand. Theroom is faintly illuminated by a candle which has St. Vitus' dance. Rousselot, our little orderly, knits away industriously in the circleof light. I smoke a pipe at once acrid and consoling, like this minuteitself in the midst of the infernal adventure. 

Before going away, I think of Croquelet, the silent, whose longsilhouette I see at the end of the room. "He sleeps all the time, " saysMulet, "he sleeps all day. " I approach the stretcher, I bend over it, and I see two large open eyes, which look at me gravely and steadily inthe gloom. And this look is so sad, so poignant, that I am filled withimpotent distress. 

"You sleep too much, my poor Croquelet. "

He answers me with his rugged accent, but in a feeble voice:

"Don't listen to him; it's not true. You know quite well that I can'tsleep, and that you won't give me a draught to let me get a real nap. This afternoon, I read a little. . . . But it wasn't very interesting. . . . If I could have another book. . . . "

"Show me your book, Croquelet. "

He thrusts out his chin towards a little tract. I strike a match, and Iread on the grey cover: "Of the Quality of Prayers addressed to God. "

"All right, Croquelet, I'll try to get you a book with pictures in it. How do you feel this evening?"

"Ah! bad! very bad! They're thawing now. . . . "

He has had frost-bite in his feet, and is beginning to suffer so muchfrom them that he forgets the wound in his side, which is mortal, butless active. 

IV

I have come to take refuge among my wounded to smoke in peace, andmeditate in the shadow. Here, the moral atmosphere is pure. These menare so wretched, so utterly humiliated, so absorbed in their relentlesssufferings that they seem to have relinquished the burden of thepassions in order to concentrate their powers on the one endeavour: tolive. 

In spite of their solidarity they are for the time isolated by theirindividual sufferings. Later on, they will communicate; but this is themoment when each one contemplates his own anguish, and fights his ownbattle, with cries of pain. . . . 

They are all my friends. I will stay among them, associating myselfwith all my soul in their ordeal. 

Perhaps here I shall find peace. Perhaps all ignoble discord will calla truce on the threshold of this empire. 

But a short distance from us the battle-field has thundered unceasinglyfor days. Like a noisy, complicated mechanism which turns out theproducts of its internal activity, the stupid machine of war throwsout, from minute to minute, bleeding men. We pick them up, and herethey are, swathed in bandages. They have been crushed in the twinklingof an eye; and now we shall have to ask months and years to repair orpalliate the damage. 

How silent they are this evening! And how it makes one's heart ache tolook at them! Here is Bourreau, with the brutal name and the gentlenature, who never utters a complaint, and whom a single bullet hasdeprived of sight for ever. Here is Bride, whom we fear to touch, socovered is he with bandages, but who looks at us with touching, liquideyes, his mind already wandering. Here is Lerouet, who will not seenext morning dawn over the pine-trees, and who has a gangrened woundnear his heart. And the others, all of whom I know by their individualmisfortunes. 

How difficult it is to realise what they were, all these men who a yearago, were walking in streets, tilling the land, or writing in anoffice. Their present is too poignant. Here they lie on the ground, like some fair work of art defaced. Behold them! The creature parexcellence has received a great outrage, an outrage it has wrought uponitself. 

We are ignorant of their past. But have they a future? I consider theseinnocent victims in the tragic majesty of the hour, and I feel ashamedof living and breathing freely among them. 

Poor, poor brothers! What could one do for you which would not beinsufficient, unworthy, mediocre? We can at least give up everythingand devote ourselves heart and soul to our holy and exacting work. 

But no! round the beds on which your solitary drama is enacted, men arestill taking part in a sinister comedy. Every kind of folly, the mostignoble and also the most imbecile passions, pursue their enterprisesand their satisfactions over your heads. 

Neither the four corpses we buried this morning, nor your daily agonieswill disarm these appetites, suspend these calculations, and destroythese ambitions the development and fruition of which even yourmartyrdom, may be made to serve. 

I will spend the whole evening among my wounded, and we will talktogether, gently, of their misery; it will please them, and they willmake me forget the horrible atmosphere of discussion that reigns here. 

Alas! during the outburst of the great catastrophe, seeing the volumeof blood and fire, listening to the uproar, smelling the stench of thevast gangrene, we thought that all passions would be laid aside, likecumbersome weapons, and that we should give ourselves up with cleanhearts and empty hands to battle against the fiery nightmare. He whofights and defends himself needs a pure heart: so does he who wandersamong charnel houses, gives drink to parched lips, washes fevered facesand bathes wounds. We thought there would be a great forgetfulness ofself and of former hopes, and of the whole world. O Union of purehearts to meet the ordeal!

But no! The first explosion was tremendous, yet hardly had its echoesdied away when the rag-pickers were already at work among the ruins, inquest of cutlet-bones and waste paper. 

And yet, think of the sacred anguish of those first hours!

Well, so be it! For my part, I will stay here, between these stretcherswith their burdens of anguish. 

At this hour one is inclined to distrust everything, man and theuniverse, and the future of Right. But we cannot have any doubts as tothe suffering of man. It is the one certain thing at this moment. 

So I will stay and drink in this sinister testimony. And each time thatBeal, who has a gaping wound in the stomach, holds out his hands to mewith a little smile, I will get up and hold his hands in mine, for heis feverish, and he knows that my hands are always icy. 

V

Bride is dead. We had been working all day, and in the evening we hadto find time to go and bury Bride. 

It is not a very long ceremony. The burial-ground is near. About adozen of us follow the lantern, slipping in the mud, and stumbling overthe graves. Here we are at the wall, and here is the long ditch, alwaysopen, which every day is prolonged a little to the right, and filled ina little to the left. Here is the line of white crosses, and theflickering shadows on the wall caused by the lantern. 

The men arrange the planks, slip the ropes, and lower the body, disputing in undertones, for it is not so easy as one might think to bea grave-digger. One must have the knack of it. And the night is verydark and the mud very sticky. 

At last the body is at the bottom of the trench, and the muddy ropesare withdrawn. The little consumptive priest who stands at thegraveside murmurs the prayer for the dead. The rain beats in our faces. The familiar demon of Artois, the wind, leaps among the ancient trees. The little priest murmurs the terrible words: Dies irae, dies illa. . . . 

And this present day is surely the day of wrath . . . I too utter myprayer: "In the name of the unhappy world, Bride, I remit all thy sins, I absolve thee from all thy faults! Let this day, at least, be a day ofrest. "

The little priest stands bare-headed in the blast. An orderly who is anecclesiastic holds the end of an apron over his head. A man raises thelantern to the level of his eye. And the rain-drops gleam and sparklefurtively. 

Bride is dead. . . . 

Now we meet again in the little room where friendship reigns. 

Pierre and Jacques, gallant fellows, I shall not forget your beautiful, painful smile at the moment which brings discouragement to theexperienced man. I shall not forget. 

The beef and rice, which one needs to be very hungry to swallow, isdistributed. And a gentle cheerfulness blossoms in the circle oflamplight, a cheerfulness which tries to catch something of the gaietyof the past. Man has such a deep-seated need of joy that he improvisesit everywhere, even in the heart of misery. 

And suddenly, through the steam of the soup, I see Bride's lookdistinctly. 

It was no ordinary look. The extremity of suffering, the approach ofdeath, perhaps, and also the hidden riches of his soul, gave itextraordinary light, sweetness, and gentleness. When one came to hisbedside, and bent over him, the look was there, a well-spring ofrefreshment. 

But Bride is dead: we saw his eyes transformed into dull, meaninglessmembranes. 

Where is that well-spring? Can it be quenched?

Bride is dead. Involuntarily, I repeat aloud: "Bride is dead. "

Have I roused a responsive echo in these sympathetic souls? A religioussilence falls upon them. The oldest of all problems comes and takes itsplace at the table like a familiar guest. It breathes mysteriously intoevery ear: "Where is Bride? Where is Bride's look?"

VI

A lantern advances, swinging among the pines. Who is coming to meet us?

Philippe recognises the figure of Monsieur Julien. Here is the man, indeed, with his porter's livery, and his base air as of an insolentslave. He waves a stable-lantern which throws grotesque shadows upwardson his face; and he is obviously furious at having been forced torender a service. 

He brandishes the lantern angrily, and thrusts out his chin to show usthe advancing figures: two men are carrying a stretcher on which lies abig body wrapped in a coarse winding sheet. The two men are weary, andset the stretcher down carefully in the mud. 

"Is it Fumat?"

"Yes. He has just died, very peacefully. "

"Where are you going?"

"There is no place anywhere for a corpse. So we are taking him to thechapel in the burial-ground. But he is heavy. "

"We will give you a hand. "

Philippe and I take hold of the stretcher. The men follow us insilence. The body is heavy, very heavy. We drag our sabots out of theclay laboriously. And we walk slowly, breathing hard. 

How heavy he is! . . . He was called Fumat . . . He was a giant. He camefrom the mountains of the Centre, leaving a red-tiled village on ahill-side, among juniper-bushes and volcanic boulders. He left hisnative place with its violet peaks and strong aromatic scents and cameto the war in Artois. He was past the age when men can march to theattack, but he guarded the trenches and cooked. He received hisdeath-wound while he was cooking. The giant of Auvergne was pepperedwith small missiles. He had no wound at all proportionate to his hugebody. Nothing but splinters of metal. Once again, David has slainGoliath. 

He was two days dying. He was asked: "Is there anything you wouldlike?" And he answered with white lips: "Nothing, thank you. " When wewere anxious and asked him "How do you feel?" he was always quitesatisfied. "I am getting on very well. " He died with a discretion, amodesty, a self-forgetfulness which redeemed the egotism of theuniverse. 

How heavy he is! He was wounded as he was blowing up the fire for thesoup. He did not die fighting. He uttered no historic word. He fell athis post as a cook. . . . He was not a hero. 

You are not a hero, Fumat. You are only a martyr. And we are going tolay you in the earth of France, which has engulfed a noble andinnumerable army of martyrs. 

The shadow of the trees sweeps like a huge sickle across space. Anacrid smell of cold decay rises on the night. The wind wails itsthrenody for Fumat. 

"Open the door, Monsieur Julien. "

The lout pushes the door, grumbling to himself. We lay the body on thepavement of the chapel. 

Renaud covers the corpse carefully with a faded flag. And suddenly, asif to celebrate the moment, the brutal roar of guns comes to us fromthe depths of the woods, breaks violently into the chapel, seizes andrattles the trembling window-panes. A hundred times over, a wholenation of cannon yells in honour of Fumat. And each time other Fumatsfall in the mud yonder, in their appointed places. 

VII

They ought not to have cut off all the light in this manner, and itwould not have been done, perhaps, if . . . 

There is a kind of mania for organisation which is the sworn enemy oforder; in its efforts to discover the best place for everything, itends by diverting everything from its right function and locality, andmaking everything as inopportune as itself. It was a mistake to cut offall the lights this evening, on some pretext or the other. The rooms ofthe old mansion are not packed with bales of cotton, but with men whohave anxious minds and tortured bodies. 

A mournful darkness suddenly reigned; and outside, the incessant stormthat rages in this country swept along like a river in spate. 

Little Rochet was dreaming in the liquid light of the lamp, with handscrossed on his breast, and the delicate profile of an exhausted saint. 

He was dreaming of vague and exquisite things, for cruel fever hasmoments of generosity between two nightmares. He was dreaming sosweetly that he forgot the abominable stench of his body, and that asmile touched the two deep wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, setthere by a week of agony. 

But all the lamps have been put out, and the noise of the hurricane hasbecome more insistent, and the wounded have ceased talking, fordarkness discourages conversation. 

There are some places where the men with whom the shells have dealtmercifully and whose wounds are only scratches congregate. These haveonly the honour of wounds, and what may be called their delights. . . . But here, we have only the worst cases; and here they have to await thesupreme decision of death. 

Little Rochet awoke to a reality full of darkness and despair. He heardnothing but laboured breathing round him, and rising above it all, theviolent breath of the storm. He was suddenly conscious of his laceratedstomach, of his lost leg, and he realised that the fetid smell in theair was the smell of his flesh. And he thought of the loving letter hehad received in the morning from his four big sisters with glossy hair, he thought of all his lost, ravished happiness. . . . 

Renaud hurries up, groping his way among the dark ambushes of thecorridor. 

"Come, come quickly. Little Rochet has thrown himself out of bed. "

Holding up a candle, I take in the melancholy scene. We have to getRochet into bed again, readjust his bandages, wipe up the fetid liquidspilt on the floor. 

Rochet's lips are compressed. I stoop to his ear and ask softly:

"Why did you do this?"

His face remains calm, and he answers gently, looking me full in theeyes: "I want to die. "

I leave the room, disarmed, my head bowed, and go in search of Monet, who is a priest and an excellent orderly. He is smoking a pipe in acorner. He has just had news that his young brother has been killed inaction, and he had snatched a few minutes of solitude. 

"Monet, " I say, "I think Rochet is a believer. Well, go to him. He maywant you. "

Monet puts away his pipe, and goes off noiselessly. 

As to me, I go and wander about outside. On the poplar-lined road, incompany with the furious rain and the darkness, I shall perhaps be ableto master the flood of bitterness that sweeps over me. 

At the end of an hour, my anxiety brings me back to Rochet's bedside. The candle is burning away with a steady flame. Monet is reading in alittle book with a clasp. The profile of the wounded man has still thepitiful austerity of a tortured saint. 

"Is he quieter now?"

Monet lifts his fine dark eyes to my face, and drops his book. 

"Yes. He is dead. "

VIII

Why has Hell been painted as a place of hopeless torture and eternallamentation?

I believe that even in the lowest depths of Hell, the damned sing, jest, and play cards. I am led to imagine this after seeing these menrowing in their galleys, chained to them by fever and wounds. 

Blaireau, who has only lost a hand, preludes in an undertone:

 Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur. . . . 

This timid breath kindles the dormant flame. Houdebine, who has afractured knee, but who now expects to be fairly comfortable till themorning, at once responds and continues:

 Marguerite! Marguerite!

The two sing in unison, with delighted smiles:

 Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur Marguerite! Marguerite!

Maville joins in at the second verse, and even Legras, whose two legsare broken, and the Chasseur Alpin, who has a hole in his skull. 

Panchat, the man who had a bullet through his neck, beats time with hisfinger, because he is forbidden to speak. 

All this goes on in low tones; but faces light up, and flush, as if abottle of brandy had been passed round. 

Then Houdebine turns to Panchat and says: "Will you have a game ofdummy manilla, Panchat?"

Dummy manilla is a game for two; and they have to be content with gamesfor two, because no one in this ward can get up, and communication isonly easy for those in adjacent beds. 

Panchat makes a sign of consent. Why should he not play dummy manilla, which is a silent game. A chair is put between the two beds, and heshuffles the cards. 

The cards are so worn at the corners that they have almost becomeovals. The court cards smile through a fog of dirt; and to deal, onehas to wet one's thumb copiously, because a thick, tenacious greasemakes the cards stick together in an evil-smelling mass. 

But a good deal of amusement is still to be got out of these preciousbits of old paste-board. 

Panchat supports himself on his elbow, Houdebine has to keep on hisback, because of his knee. He holds his cards against his chin, andthrows them down energetically on the chair with his right hand. 

The chair is rather far off, the cards are dirty, and sometimesHoudebine asks his silent adversary: "What's that?"

Panchat takes the card and holds it out at arm's length. 

Houdebine laughs gaily. 

He plays his cards one after the other, and dummy's hand also:

"Trump! Trump! Trump! And ace of hearts!"

Even those who cannot see anything laugh too. 

Panchat is vexed, but he too laughs noiselessly. Then he takes out thelost sou from under his straw pillow. 

Meanwhile, Mulet is telling a story. It is always the same story, butit is always interesting. 

An almost imperceptible voice, perhaps Legras', hums slowly:

 Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur. 

Who talks of happiness here?

I recognise the accents of obstinate, generous life. I recognise thineaccents, artless flesh! Only thou couldst dare to speak of happinessbetween the pain of the morning and that of the evening, between theman who is groaning on the right, and the man who is dying on the left. 

Truly, in the utmost depths of Hell, the damned must mistake their needof joy for joy itself. 

I know quite well that there is hope here. 

So that in hell too there must be hope. 

IX

But lately, Death was the cruel stranger, the stealthy-footedvisitor. . . . Now, it is the romping dog of the house. 

Do you remember the days when the human body seemed made for joy, wheneach of its organs represented a function and a delight? Now, each partof the body evokes the evil that threatens it, and the specialsuffering it engenders. 

Apart from this, it is well adapted for its part in the laboriousdrama: the foot to carry a man to the attack; the arm to work thecannon; the eye to watch the adversary or adjust the weapon. 

But lately, Death was no part of life. We talked of it covertly. Itsimage was at once painful and indecent, calculated to upset the plansand projects of existence. It worked as far as possible in obscurity, silence and retirement. We disguised it with symbols; we announced itin laborious paraphrases, marked by a kind of shame. 

To-day Death is closely bound up with the things of life. And this istrue, not so much because its daily operations are on a vast scale, because it chooses the youngest and the healthiest among us, because ithas become a kind of sacred institution, but more especially because ithas become a thing so ordinary that it no longer causes us to suspendour usual activities, as it used to do: we eat and drink beside thedead, we sleep amidst the dying, we laugh and sing in the company ofcorpses. 

And how, indeed, can it be otherwise? You know quite well that mancannot live without eating, drinking, and sleeping, nor withoutlaughing and singing. 

Ask all those who are suffering their hard Calvary here. They aregentle and courageous, they sympathise with the pain of others; butthey must eat when the soup comes round, sleep, if they can, during thelong night; and try to laugh again when the ward is quiet, and thecorpse of the morning has been carried out. 

Death remains a great thing, but one with which one's relations havebecome frequent and intimate. Like the king who shows himself at histoilet, Death is still powerful, but it has become familiar andslightly degraded. 

Lerouet died just now. We closed his eyes, tied up his chin, thenpulled out the sheet to cover the corpse while it was waiting for thestretcher-bearers. 

"Can't you eat anything?" said Mulet to Maville. Maville, who is veryyoung and shy, hesitates: "I can't get it down. "

And after a pause, he adds: "I can't bear to see such things. "

Mulet wipes his plate calmly and says: "Yes, sometimes it used to takeaway my appetite too, so much so that I used to be sick. But I have gotaccustomed to it now. "

Pouchet gulps down his coffee with a sort of feverish eagerness. 

"One feels glad to get off with the loss of a leg when one sees that. "

"One must live, " adds Mulet. 

"Well, for all the pleasure one gets out of life. . . . "

Beliard is the speaker. He had a bullet in the bowel, yet we hope toget him well soon. But his whole attitude betrays indifference. Hesmokes a great deal, and rarely speaks. He has no reason to despair, and he knows that he can resume his ordinary life. But familiarity withDeath, which sometimes makes life seem so precious, occasionally endsby producing a distaste for it, or rather a deep weariness of it. 

X

A whole nation, ten whole nations are learning to live in Death'scompany. Humanity has entered the wild beast's cage, and sits therewith the patient courage of the lion-tamer. 

Men of my country, I learn to know you better every day, and fromhaving looked you in the face at the height of your sufferings, I haveconceived a religious hope for the future of our race. It is mainlyowing to my admiration for your resignation, your native goodness, yourserene confidence in better times to come that I can still believe inthe moral future of the world. 

At the very hour when the most natural instinct inclines the world toferocity, you preserve, on your beds of suffering, a beauty, a purityof outlook which goes far to atone for the monstrous crime. Men ofFrance, your simple grandeur of soul redeems humanity from its greatestcrime, and raises it from its deep abyss. 

We are told how you bear the misery of the battle-field, how in thediscouraging cold and mud, you await the hour of your cruel duty, howyou rush forward to meet the mortal blow, through the unimaginabletumult of peril. 

But when you come here, there are further sufferings in store for you;and I know with what courage you endure them. 

The doors of the Chateau close on a new life for you, a life that isalso one of perpetual peril and contest. I help you in this contest, and I see how gallantly you wage it. 

Not a wrinkle in your faces escapes me. Not one of your pains, not oneof the tremors of your lacerated flesh. And I write them all down, justas I note your simple words, your cries, your sighs of hope, as I alsonote the expression of your faces at the solemn hour when man speaks nomore. 

Not one of your words leaves me unmoved; there is not one of youractions which is not worthy of record. All must contribute to thehistory of our great ordeal. 

For it is not enough to give oneself up to the sacred duty of succour. It is not enough to apply the beneficent knife to the wound, or tochange the dressings skilfully and carefully. 

It is also my mission to record the history of those who have been thesacrificial victims of the race, without gloss, in all its truth andsimplicity; the history of the men you have shown yourselves to be insuffering. 

If I left this undone, you would, no doubt, be cured as perfectly, orwould perish none the less; but the essence of the majestic lessonwould be lost, the most splendid elements of your courage would remainbarren. 

And I invite all the world to bow before you with the same attentivereverence, WITH HEARTS THAT FORGET NOTHING. 

Union of pure hearts to meet the ordeal! Union of pure hearts that ourcountry may know and respect herself! Union of pure hearts for theredemption of the stricken world!