THE SHADOWS
We did not leave for the trenches on the day we ought to have done.
Evening came, then night--nothing happened. On the morning of the
fifth day some of us were leaning, full of idleness and uncertainty,
against the front of a house that had been holed and bunged up again,
at the corner of a street. One of our comrades said to me, "Perhaps we
shall stay here till the end of the war."
There were signs of dissent, but all the same, the little street we had
not left on the appointed day seemed just then to resemble the streets
of yore!
Near the place where we were watching the hours go by--and fumbling in
packets of that coarse tobacco that has skeletons in it--the hospital
was installed. Through the low door we saw a broken stream of poor
soldiers pass, sunken and bedraggled, with the sluggish eyes of
beggars; and the clean and wholesome uniform of the corporal who led
them stood forth among them.
They were always pretty much the same men who haunted the inspection
rooms. Many soldiers make it a point of honor never to report sick,
and in their obstinacy there is an obscure and profound heroism.
Others give way and come as often as possible to the gloomy places of
the Army Medical Corps, to run aground opposite the major's door.
Among these are found real human remnants in whom some visible or
secret malady persists.
The examining-room was contrived in a ground floor room whose furniture
had been pushed back in a heap. Through the open window came the voice
of the major, and by furtively craning our necks we could just see him
at the table, with his tabs and his eyeglass. Before him, half-naked
indigents stood, cap in hand, their coats on their arms, or their
trousers on their feet, pitifully revealing the man through the
soldier, and trying to make the most of the bleeding cords of their
varicose veins, or the arm from which a loose and cadaverous bandage
hung and revealed the hollow of an obstinate wound, laying stress on
their hernia or the everlasting bronchitis beyond their ribs. The
major was a good sort and, it seemed, a good doctor. But this time he
hardly examined the parts that were shown to him and his monotonous
verdict took wings into the street. "Fit to march--good--consultation
without penalty."[1]
[Footnote 1: As a precaution against "scrimshanking," a penalty
attaches to "consultations" which are adjudged uncalled-for.--Tr.]
"Consultations," which merely send the soldier back into the ranks
continued indefinitely. No one was exempted from marching. Once we
heard the husky and pitiful voice of a simpleton who was dressing again
in recrimination. The doctor argued, in a good-natured way, and then
said, his voice suddenly serious, "Sorry, my good man, but I cannot
exempt you. I have certain instructions. Make an effort. You can
still do it."
We saw them come out, one by one, these creatures of deformed body and
dwindling movement, leaning on each other, as though attached, and
mumbling, "Nothing can be done, nothing."
Little Mélusson, reserved and wretched, with his long red nose between
his burning cheekbones, was standing among us in the idle file with
which the morning seemed vaguely in fellowship. He had not been to the
inspection, but he said, "I can carry on to-day still; but to-morrow I
shall knock under. To-morrow----"
We paid no attention to Mélusson's words. Some one near us said,
"Those instructions the major spoke of, they're a sign."
* * * * * *
On parade that same morning the chief, with his nose on a paper, read
out: "By order of the Officer Commanding," and then he stammered out
some names, names of some soldiers in the regiment brigaded with ours,
who had been shot for disobedience. There was a long list of them. At
the beginning of the reading a slight growl was heard going round.
Then, as the surnames came out, as they spread out in a crowd around
us, there was silence. This direct contact with the phantoms of the
executed set a wind of terror blowing and bowed all heads.
It was the same again on the days that followed. After parade orders,
the commandant, whom we rarely saw, mustered the four companies under
arms on some waste ground. He spoke to us of the military situation,
particularly favorable to us on the whole front, and of the final
victory which could not be long delayed. He made promises to us.
"Soon you will be at home," and smiled on us for the first time. He
said, "Men, I do not know what is going to happen, but when it should
be necessary I rely on you. As always, do your duty and be silent. It
is so easy to be silent and to act!"
We broke off and made ourselves scarce. Returned to quarters we
learned there was to be an inspection of cartridges and reserve rations
by the captain. We had hardly time to eat. Majorat waxed wroth, and
confided his indignation to Termite, who was a good audience, "It's all
the fault of that unlucky captain--we're just slaves!"
He shook his fist as he spoke towards the Town Hall.
But Termite shrugged his shoulders, looked at him unkindly, and said,
"Like a rotten egg, that's how you talk. That captain, and all the red
tabs and brass hats, it's not them that invented the rules. They're
just gilded machines--machines like you, but not so cheap. If you want
to do away with discipline, do away with war, my fellow; that's a sight
easier than to make it amusing for the private."
He left Majorat crestfallen, and the others as well. For my part I
admired the peculiar skill with which the anti-militarist could give
answers beside the mark and yet always seem to be in the right.
During those days they multiplied the route-marches and the exercises
intended to let the officers get the men again in hand. These
maneuvers tired us to death, and especially the sham attacks on wooded
mounds, carried out in the evening among bogs and thorn-thickets. When
we got back, most of the men fell heavily asleep just as they had
fallen, beside their knapsacks, without having the heart to eat.
Right in the middle of the night and this paralyzed slumber, a cry
echoed through the walls, "Alarm! Stand to arms!"
We were so weary that the brutal reveille seemed at first, to the
blinking and rusted men, like the shock of a nightmare. Then, while
the cold blew in through the open door and we heard the sentries
running through the streets, while the corporals lighted the candles
and shook us with their voices, we sat up askew, and crouched, and got
our things ready, and stood up and fell in shivering, with flabby legs
and minds befogged, in the black-hued street.
After the roll-call and some orders and counter-orders, we heard the
command "Forward!" and we left the rest-camp as exhausted as when we
entered it. And thus we set out, no one knew where.
At first it was the same exodus as always. It was on the same road
that we disappeared: into the same great circles of blackness that we
sank.
We came to the shattered glass works and then to the quarry, which
daybreak was washing and fouling and making its desolation more
complete. Fatigue was gathering darkly within us and abating our pace.
Faces appeared stiff and wan, and as though they were seen through
gratings. We were surrounded by cries of "Forward!" thrown from all
directions between the twilight of the sky and the night of the earth.
It took a greater effort every time to tear ourselves away from the
halts.
We were not the only regiment in movement in these latitudes. The
twilight depths were full. Across the spaces that surrounded the
quarry men were passing without ceasing and without limit, their feet
breaking and furrowing the earth like plows. And one guessed that the
shadows also were full of hosts going as we were to the four corners of
the unknown. Then the clay and its thousand barren ruts, these
corpse-like fields, fell away. Under the ashen tints of early day,
fog-banks of men descended the slopes. From the top I saw nearly the
whole regiment rolling into the deeps. As once of an evening in the
days gone by, I had a perception of the multitude's immensity and the
threat of its might, that might which surpasses all and is impelled by
invisible mandates.
We stopped and drew breath again; and on the gloomy edge of this gulf
some soldiers even amused themselves by inciting Termite to speak of
militarism and anti-militarism. I saw faces which laughed, through
their black and woeful pattern of fatigue, around the little man who
gesticulated in impotence. Then we had to set off again.
We had never passed that way but in the dark, and we did not recognize
the scenes now that we saw them. From the lane which we descended,
holding ourselves back, to gain the trench, we saw for the first time
the desert through which we had so often passed--plains and lagoons
unlimited.
The waterlogged open country, with its dispirited pools and their
smoke-like islets of trees, seemed nothing but a reflection of the
leaden, cloud-besmirched sky. The walls of the trenches, pallid as
ice-floes, marked with their long, sinuous crawling where they had been
slowly torn from the earth by the shovels. These embossings and canals
formed a complicated and incalculable network, smudged near at hand by
bodies and wreckage; dreary and planetary in the distance. One could
make out the formal but hazy stakes and posts, aligned in the distance
to the end of sight; and here and there the swellings and round
ink-blots of the dugouts. In some sections of trench one could
sometimes even descry black lines, like a dark wall between other
walls, and these lines stirred--they were the workmen of destruction.
A whole region in the north, on higher ground, was a forest flown away,
leaving only a stranded bristling of masts, like a quayside. There was
thunder in the sky, but it was drizzling, too, and even the flashes
were gray above that infinite liquefaction in which each regiment was
as lost as each man.
We entered the plain and disappeared into the trench. The "open
crossing" was now pierced by a trench, though it was little more than
begun. Amid the smacks of the bullets which blurred its edges we had
to crawl flat on our bellies, along the sticky bottom of this gully.
The close banks gripped and stopped our packs so that we floundered
perforce like swimmers, to go forward in the earth, under the murder in
the air. For a second the anguish and the effort stopped my heart and
in a nightmare I saw the cadaverous littleness of my grave closing over
me.
At the end of this torture we got up again, in spite of the knapsacks.
The last star-shells were sending a bloody _aurora borealis_ into the
morning. Sudden haloes drew our glances and crests of black smoke went
up like cypresses. On both sides, in front and behind, we heard the
fearful suicide of shells.
* * * * * *
We marched in the earth's interior until evening. From time to time
one hoisted the pack up or pressed down one's cap into the sweat of the
forehead; had it fallen it could not have been picked up again in the
mechanism of the march; and then we began again to fight with the
distance. The hand contracted on the rifle-sling was tumefied by the
shoulder-straps and the bent arm was broken.
Like a regular refrain the lamentation of Mélusson came to me. He kept
saying that he was going to stop, but he did not stop, ever, and he
even butted into the back of the man in front of him when the whistle
went for a halt.
The mass of the men said nothing. And the greatness of this silence,
this despotic and oppressive motion, irritated Adjutant Marcassin, who
would have liked to see some animation. He rated and lashed us with a
vengeance. He hustled the file in the narrowness of the trench as he
clove to the corners so as to survey his charge. But then he had no
knapsack.
Through the heavy distant noise of our tramping, through the funereal
consolation of our drowsiness, we heard the adjutant's ringing voice,
violently reprimanding this or the other. "Where have you seen, swine,
that there can be patriotism without hatred? Do you think one can love
his own country if he doesn't hate the others?"
When some one spoke banteringly of militarism--for no one, except
Termite, who didn't count, took the word seriously--Marcassin growled
despairingly, "French militarism and Prussian militarism, they're not
the same thing, for one's French and the other's Prussian!"
But we felt that all these wrangles only shocked and wearied him. He
was instantly and gloomily silent.
We were halted to mount guard in a part we had never seen before, and
for that reason it seemed worse than the others to us at first. We had
to scatter and run up and down the shelterless trench all night, to
avoid the plunging files of shells. That night was but one great crash
and we were strewn in the middle of it among black puddles, upon a
ghostly background of earth. We moved on again in the morning,
bemused, and the color of night. In front of the column we still heard
the cry "Forward!" Then we redoubled the violence of our effort, we
extorted some little haste from out us; and the soaked and frozen
company went on under cathedrals of cloud which collapsed in flames,
victims of a fate whose name they had no time to seek, a fate which
only let its force be felt, like God.
During the day, and much farther on, they cried "Halt!" and the
smothered sound of the march was silent. From the trench in which we
collapsed under our packs, while another lot went away, we could see as
far as a railway embankment. The far end of the loophole-pipe enframed
tumbledown dwellings and cabins, ruined gardens where the grass and the
flowers were interred, enclosures masked by palings, fragments of
masonry to which eloquent remains of posters even still clung--a corner
full of artificial details, of human things, of illusions. The railway
bank was near, and in the network of wire stretched between it and us
many bodies were fast-caught as flies.
The elements had gradually dissolved those bodies and time had worn
them out. With their dislocated gestures and point-like heads they
were but lightly hooked to the wire. For whole hours our eyes were
fixed on this country all obstructed by a machinery of wires and full
of men who were not on the ground. One, swinging in the wind, stood
out more sharply than the others, pierced like a sieve a hundred times
through and through, and a void in the place of his heart. Another
specter, quite near, had doubtless long since disintegrated, while held
up by his clothes. At the time when the shadow of night began to seize
us in its greatness a wind arose, a wind which shook the desiccated
creature, and he emptied himself of a mass of mold and dust. One saw
the sky's whirlwind, dark and disheveled, in the place where the man
had been; the soldier was carried away by the wind and buried in the
sky.
Towards the end of the afternoon the piercing whistle of the bullets
was redoubled. We were riddled and battered by the noise. The
wariness with which we watched the landscape that was watching us
seemed to exasperate Marcassin. He pondered an idea; then came to a
sudden decision and cried triumphantly, "Look!"
He climbed to the parapet, stood there upright, shook his fist at space
with the blind and simple gesture of the apostle who is offering his
example and his heart, and shouted, "Death to the Boches!"
Then he came down, quivering with the faith of his self-gift.
"Better not do that again," growled the soldiers who were lined up in
the trench, gorgonized by the extraordinary sight of a living man
standing, for no reason, on a front line parapet in broad daylight,
stupefied by the rashness they admired although it outstripped them.
"Why not? Look!"
Marcassin sprang up once more. Lean and erect, he stood like a poplar,
and raising both arms straight into the air, he yelled, "I believe only
in the glory of France!"
Nothing else was left for him; he was but a conviction. Hardly had he
spoken thus in the teeth of the invisible hurricane when he opened his
arms, assumed the shape of a cross against the sky, spun round, and
fell noisily into the middle of the trench and of our cries.
He had rolled onto his belly. We gathered round him. With a jerk he
turned on to his back, his arms slackened, and his gaze drowned in his
eyes. His blood began to spread around him, and we drew our great
boots away, that we should not walk on that blood.
"He died like an idiot," said Margat in a choking voice; "but by God
it's fine!"
He took off his cap, saluted awkwardly and stood with bowed head.
"Committing suicide for an idea, it's fine," mumbled Vidaine.
"It's fine, it's fine!" other voices said.
And these little words fluttered down like leaves and petals onto the
body of the great dead soldier.
"Where's his cap, that he thought so much of?" groaned his orderly,
Aubeau, looking in all directions.
"Up there, to be sure: I'll fetch it," said Termite.
The comical man went for the relic. He mounted the parapet in his
turn, coolly, but bending low. We saw him ferreting about, frail as a
poor monkey on the terrible crest. At last he put his hand on the cap
and jumped into the trench. A smile sparkled in his eyes and in the
middle of his beard, and his brass "cold meat ticket" jingled on his
shaggy wrist.
They took the body away. The men carried it and a third followed with
the cap. One of us said, "The war's over for him!" And during the
dead man's recessional we were mustered, and we continued to draw
nearer to the unknown. But everything seemed to recede as fast as we
advanced, even events.
* * * * * *
We wandered five days, six days, in the lines, almost without sleeping.
We stood for hours, for half-nights and half-days, waiting for ways to
be clear that we could not see. Unceasingly they made us go back on
our tracks and begin over again. We mounted guard in trenches, we
fitted ourselves into some stripped and sinister corner which stood out
against a charred twilight or against fire. We were condemned to see
the same abysses always.
For two nights we bent fiercely to the mending of an old third-line
trench above the ruin of its former mending. We repaired the long
skeleton, soft and black, of its timbers. From that dried-up drain we
besomed the rubbish of equipment, of petrified weapons, of rotten
clothes and of victuals, of a sort of wreckage of forest and
house--filthy, incomparably filthy, infinitely filthy. We worked by
night and hid by day. The only light for us was the heavy dawn of
evening when they dragged us from sleep. Eternal night covered the
earth.
After the labor, as soon as daybreak began to replace night with
melancholy, we buried ourselves methodically in the depth of the
caverns there. Only a deadened murmur penetrated to them, but the rock
moved by reason of the earthquakes. When some one lighted his pipe, by
that gleam we looked at each other. We were fully equipped; we could
start away at any minute; it was forbidden to take off the heavy
jingling chain of cartridges around us.
I heard some one say, "In _my_ country there are fields, and paths, and
the sea; nowhere else in the world is there that."
Among these shades of the cave--an abode of the first men as it
seemed--I saw the hand start forth of him who existed on the spectacle
of the fields and the sea, who was trying to show it and to seize it;
or I saw around a vague halo four card-players stubbornly bent upon
finding again something of an ancient and peaceful attachment in the
faces of the cards; or I saw Margat flourish a Socialist paper that had
fallen from Termite's pocket, and burst into laughter at the censored
blanks it contained. And Majorat raged against life, caressed his
reserve bottle with his lips till out of breath and then, appeased and
his mouth dripping, said it was the only way to alleviate his
imprisonment. Then sleep slew words and gestures and thoughts. I kept
repeating some phrase to myself, trying in vain to understand it; and
sleep submerged me, ancestral sleep so dreary and so deep that it seems
there had only and ever been one long, lone sleep here on earth, above
which our few actions float, and which ever returns to fill the flesh
of man with night.
Forward! Our nights are torn from us in lots. The bodies, invaded by
caressing poison, and even by confidences and apparitions, shake
themselves and stand up again. We extricate ourselves from the hole,
and emerge from the density of buried breath; stumbling we climb into
icy space, odorless, infinite space. The oscillation of the march,
assailed on both sides by the trench, brings brief and paltry halts, in
which we recline against the walls, or cast ourselves on them. We
embrace the earth, since nothing else is left us to embrace.
Then Movement seizes us again. Metrified by regular jolts, by the
shock of each step, by our prisoned breathing, it loses its hold no
more, but becomes incarnate in us. It sets one small word resounding
in our heads, between our teeth--"Forward!"--longer, more infinite than
the uproar of the shells. It sets us making, towards the east or
towards the north, bounds which are days and nights in length. It
turns us into a chain which rolls along with a sound of steel--the
metallic hammering of rifle, bayonet, cartridges, and of the tin cup
which shines on the dark masses like a bolt. Wheels, gearing,
machinery! One sees life and the reality of things striking and
consuming and forging each other.
We knew well enough that we were going towards some tragedy that the
chiefs knew of; but the tragedy was above all in the going there.
* * * * * *
We changed country. We left the trenches and climbed out upon the
earth--along a great incline which hid the enemy horizon from us and
protected us against him. The blackening dampness turned the cold into
a thing, and laid frozen shudders on us. A pestilence surrounded us,
wide and vague; and sometimes lines of pale crosses alongside our march
spelled out death in a more precise way.
It was our tenth night; it was at the end of all our nights, and it
seemed greater than they. The distances groaned, roared and growled,
and would sometimes abruptly define the crest of the incline among the
winding sheets of the mists. The intermittent flutters of light showed
me the soldier who marched in front of me. My eyes, resting in fixity
on him, discovered his sheepskin coat, his waist-belt, straining at the
shoulder-straps, dragged by the metal-packed cartridge pouches, by the
bayonet, by the trench-tool; his round bags, pushed backwards; his
swathed and hooded rifle; his knapsack, packed lengthways so as not to
give a handle to the earth which goes by on either side; the blanket,
the quilt, the tentcloth, folded accordion-wise on the top of each
other, and the whole surmounted by the mess-tin, ringing like a
mournful bell, higher than his head. What a huge, heavy and mighty
mass the armed soldier is, near at hand and when one is looking at
nothing else!
Once, in consequence of a command badly given or badly understood, the
company wavered, flowed back and pawed the ground in disorder on the
declivity. Fifty men, who were all alike by reason of their sheepskins
ran here and there and one by one--a vague collection of evasive men,
small and frail, not knowing what to do; while non-coms ran round them,
abused and gathered them. Order began again, and against the whitish
and bluish sheets spread by the star-shells I saw the pendulums of the
step once more fall into line under the long body of shadows.
During the night there was a distribution of brandy. By the light of
lanterns we saw the cups held out, shaking and gleaming. The libation
drew from our entrails a moment of delight and uplifting. The liquid's
fierce flow awoke deep impulses, restored the martial mien to us, and
made us grasp our rifles with a victorious desire to kill.
But the night was longer than that dream. Soon, the kind of goddess
superposed on our shadows left our hands and our heads, and that thrill
of glory was of no use.
Indeed, its memory filled our hearts with a sort of bitterness. "You
see, there's no trenches anywhere about here," grumbled the men.
"And why are there no trenches?" said a wrongheaded man; "why, it's
because they don't care a damn for soldiers' lives."
"Fathead!" the corporal interrupted; "what's the good of trenches
behind, if there's one in front, fathead!"
* * * * * *
"Halt!"
We saw the Divisional Staff go by in the beam of a searchlight. In
that valley of night it might have been a procession of princes rising
from a subterranean palace. On cuffs and sleeves and collars badges
wagged and shone, golden aureoles encircled the heads of this group of
apparitions.
The flashing made us start and awoke us forcibly, as it did the night.
The men had been pressed back upon the side of the sunken hollow to
clear the way; and they watched, blended with the solidity of the dark.
Each great person in his turn pierced the fan of moted sunshine, and
each was lighted up for some paces. Hidden and abashed, the
shadow-soldiers began to speak in very low voices of those who went by
like torches.
They who passed first, guiding the Staff, were the company and
battalion officers. We knew them. The quiet comments breathed from
the darkness were composed either of praises or curses; these were good
and clear-sighted officers; those were triflers or skulkers.
"That's one that's killed some men!"
"That's one I'd be killed for!"
"The infantry officer who really does all he ought," Pélican declared,
"well, he get's killed."
"Or else he's lucky."
"There's black and there's white in the company officers. At bottom
you know, I say they're men. It's just a chance you've got whether you
tumble on the good or the bad sort. No good worrying. It's just
luck."
"More's the pity for us."
The soldier who said that smiled vaguely, lighted by a reflection from
the chiefs. One read in his face an acquiescence which recalled to me
certain beautiful smiles I had caught sight of in former days on
toilers' humble faces. Those who are around me are saying to
themselves, "Thus it is written," and they think no farther than that,
massed all mistily in the darkness, like vague hordes of negroes.
Then officers went by of whom we did not speak, because we did not know
them. These unknown tab-bearers made a greater impression than the
others; and besides, their importance and their power were increasing.
We saw rows of increasing crowns on the caps. Then, the shadow-men
were silent. The eulogy and the censure addressed to those whom one
had seen at work had no hold on these, and all those minor things faded
away. These were admired in the lump.
This superstition made me smile. But the general of the division
himself appeared in almost sacred isolation. The tabs and
thunderbolts[1] and stripes of his satellites glittered at a respectful
distance only. Then it seemed to me that I was face to face with Fate
itself--the will of this man. In his presence a sort of instinct
dazzled me.
[Footnote 1: Distinctive badge for Staff officers and others.--Tr.]
"Packs up! Forward!"
We took back upon our hips and neck the knapsack which had the shape
and the weight of a yoke, which every minute that falls on it weighs
down more dourly. The common march went on again. It filled a great
space; it shook the rocky slopes with its weight. In vain I bent my
head--I could not hear the sound of my own steps, so blended was it
with the others. And I repeated obstinately to myself that one had to
admire the intelligent force which sets all this deep mass in movement,
which says to us or makes us say, "Forward!" or "It has to be!" or "You
will _not_ know!" which hurls the world we are into a whirlpool so
great that we do not even see the direction of our fall, into
profundities we cannot see because they are profound. We have need of
masters who know all that we do not know.
* * * * * *
Our weariness so increased and overflowed that it seemed as if we grew
bigger at every step! And then one no longer thought of fatigue. We
had forgotten it, as we had forgotten the number of the days and even
their names. Always we made one step more, always.
Ah, the infantry soldiers, the pitiful Wandering Jews who are always
marching! They march mathematically, in rows of four numbers, or in
file in the trenches, four-squared by their iron load, but separate,
separate. Bent forward they go, almost prostrated, trailing their
legs, kicking the dead. Slowly, little by little, they are wounded by
the length of time, by the incalculable repetition of movements, by the
greatness of things. They are borne down by their bones and muscles,
by their own human weight. At halts of only ten minutes, they sink
down. "There's no time to sleep!" "No matter," they say, and they go
to sleep as happy people do.
* * * * * *
Suddenly we learned that nothing was going to happen! It was all over
for us, and we were going to return to the rest-camp. We said it over
again to ourselves. And one evening they said, "We're returning,"
although they did not know, as they went on straight before them,
whether they were going forward or backward.
In the plaster-kiln which we are marching past there is a bit of
candle, and sunk underneath its feeble illumination there are four men.
Nearer, one sees that it is a soldier, guarding three prisoners. The
sight of these enemy soldiers in greenish and red rags gives us an
impression of power, of victory. Some voices question them in passing.
They are dismayed and stupefied; the fists that prop up their yellow
cheekbones protrude triangular caricatures of features. Sometimes, at
the cut of a frank question, they show signs of lifting their heads,
and awkwardly try to give vent to an answer.
"What's he say, that chap?" they asked Sergeant Müller.
"He says that war's none of their fault; it's the big people's."
"The swine!" grunts Margat.
We climb the hill and go down the other side of it. Meandering, we
steer towards the infernal glimmers down yonder. At the foot of the
hill we stop. There ought to be a clear view, but it is
evening--because of the bad weather and because the sky is full of
black things and of chemical clouds with unnatural colors. Storm is
blended with war. Above the fierce and furious cry of the shells I
heard, in domination over all, the peaceful boom of thunder.
They plant us in subterranean files, facing a wide plain of gentle
gradient which dips from the horizon towards us, a plain with a rolling
jumble of thorn-brakes and trees, which the gale is seizing by the
hair. Squalls charged with rain and cold are passing over and
immensifying it; and there are rivers and cataclysms of clamor along
the trajectories of the shells. Yonder, under the mass of the rust-red
sky and its sullen flames, there opens a yellow rift where trees stand
forth like gallows. The soil is dismembered. The earth's covering has
been blown a lot in slabs, and its heart is seen reddish and lined
white--butchery as far as the eye can see.
There is nothing now but to sit down and recline one's back as
conveniently as possible. We stay there and breathe and live a little;
we are calm, thanks to that faculty we have of never seeing either the
past or the future.
* * * * * *