It was in the month of October 1915 that I made the acquaintance of
Lieutenant Dauche.
I can never recall that time without deep emotion. We had been living,
before Sapigneul, through weeks of fire. The Champagne offensive had
for long been rumbling on our right, and its farthest eddies seemed
to break on our sector, as the waves scattered by a hurricane that
spends itself in the open sea. For three days our guns had made reply
to those of Pouilleuse, and we had waited, rifles at hand, for an order
which never came. Our minds were uneasy and vacant, still reeling
from that kind of resonant drunkenness which results from a prolonged
bombardment. We were glad at not having to make a murderous attack, and
at the same time we worried over the causes which had prevented it.
It was then that I was wounded for the first time. Some chance
evacuation took me to the Château de S----, which is, for the Rheims
country, an indifferent piece of architecture. It stands in the midst
of soft verdure and looks, across the slope of the hill, upon the
delicate valley of the Vesle.
My wound, though not serious, was painful enough. It made me a little
feverish and long for silence and solitude. It gave me pleasure
to remain, for long hours, in the presence of a pain which, while
endurable, made me test my patience and reflect on the vulnerable
nature of an organism in which, up till then, I had placed an
unshakable confidence.
I occupied a bright room, decorated with Jouy tapestry and delicate
paintings. My bed was placed there together with that of another
officer, who walked silently up and down the room, and who respected my
reticence. The day came, however, when I was told to take solid food,
and that day we began chatting, no doubt because the most ancient human
traditions dispose those who eat together to enter into conversation.
In spite of the moods which I then experienced, this talk was a
pleasure and gave me what I must have needed.
I was absorbed in melancholy reflections, and brooded over the misery
of the times. Lieutenant Dauche from the first appeared to me to show a
serenity of mind and a quiet cheerfulness of spirit. Later, I saw that
he deserved to be greatly admired for maintaining such an attitude in
the face of an unending misfortune which had not spared him any trials.
We were both natives of Lille; it gave us a point of contact. The event
of an inheritance, and the requirements of his position, early led
Dauche to settle in the Meuse district and set up a home there.
His marriage was happy, and his young wife was mother of two fine
children. A third was about to be born when the German invasion swept
over the face of France, unsettling the world, ruining a prosperous
industry, violently separating Dauche from his children and his
pregnant wife, of whom, since, he had only heard uncertain and
disquieting news.
I, too, had left in the invaded country those I loved, and also my
possessions. I felt, therefore, in the presence of Dauche the effect
of that solidarity which is aroused by a common misfortune. I ought,
however, to admit that my comrade had suffered more terrible calamities
than mine with greater fortitude, though he was more sensitive, as I
observed on several occasions.
Of pleasing height, Dauche had the pink complexion and the fair hair
characteristic of my country. A delicate beard adorned and prolonged
a face full of gentleness and life, like those young men whom Flemish
artists have portrayed, often so happily, wearing a frilled collar and
a heavy golden chain gleaming on a waistcoat of dark velvet.
A light bandage passed over his forehead. He seemed so little disturbed
by it that I did not trouble for some time to talk to him about his
wound. Besides, he never referred to it himself. I saw him once change
the dressing, and it was then that he explained to me in a few words
how a piece of grenade had struck him during a skirmish. He seemed to
treat the incident with the most perfect indifference.
“Nothing draws me away from the front,” he added, with a melancholy
smile, “and I was intending forthwith to return to my corps; but the
doctor is flatly opposed to it.”
He confessed it was not without pleasure that he looked forward to
spending the period of convalescence in the Château de S----, which
autumn adorned so nobly.
From the second week, in spite of the state of my wound on my shoulder,
I was given permission to walk a little. Dauche helped me with a
brotherly tenderness, and it was through his encouragement that I was
able soon to venture in the avenues of the park.
The doctor who looked after us both said to me in rather an embarrassed
tone:
“You are going out with Lieutenant Dauche? See that you don’t go too
far.”
This doctor was of a reticent nature. I did not ask for explanations; I
was confident in my recovered strength. It never struck me--naturally
enough--that the doctor was in fact thinking of Dauche.
Several days went by, blessed with all that is warm, young,
affectionate in a growing friendship. The war, among a thousand other
miseries, has compelled us to live occasionally in the company of
men whom in time of peace we should have carefully avoided. It was,
then, with a trembling joy that I recognised in Dauche those qualities
which would move my nature to love and affection--a nature which had
ever perhaps been unduly difficult and uneasy. I thought that a deep
predestined purpose operated there: the men of this age who can become
my friends are marked, and determined, in the universe with the same
mysterious sign; but I may not know them all, and perhaps I shall never
be fated to meet my best friend.
The times when it did not rain we passed in long conversations on the
hillside, under a plantation of pines and beech trees. My young friend
perceived and judged natural objects with the innocence, freshness
and originality of a child. He spoke of his scattered family with a
stubborn faith in their safety--a faith that usually is found only in
religious fanatics or in men unbalanced by fame or success.
In the evening, when the approach of darkness tended to bring back to
the mind the awful things one had experienced and made one withdraw
into oneself, he used cheerfully to ask me to have a game of chess, and
this game of skill took us on to the threshold of sleep.
* * * * *
The pleasure I had in the company of Dauche led me one day to tell the
doctor how much I admired his character.
The doctor, who was ceasing to be young, was tall, rather bent and
bald, with a sad, timid, and kind smile on his face half-hidden by a
straggling beard.
“Fate,” I said, “is no respecter of victims. It is terrible to find
it striking down natures so generous, and it is a marvel that it has
failed to produce worse effects than it has.”
We began chatting as we walked with measured steps along a narrow
pathway hidden away among the hazel trees.
My companion made a queer little movement with his shoulders and looked
round to make sure that we were alone.
“You appear to take great pleasure in Dauche’s company,” he said to me,
“and it is very natural. But I have already begged you never to prolong
your walks with him too far from the Château, and I must repeat the
warning.”
The tone of his voice at once made me rather anxious, and I did not
hide my amazement.
“Dauche,” I began, “seems to me to be convalescing slowly but surely.
Can there be anything serious in that scar on his forehead?”
The doctor had stopped. He was trying to dislodge, with the tip of his
boot, a stone embedded in the road.
“This scratch,” he said very quickly, still looking down, “is very much
more serious than you imagine.”
A painful silence ensued, and as I remained quiet, the doctor went on,
with frequent pauses:
“We are beginning to understand these injuries of the skull. Your
friend does not know, and must not know, how serious his condition is.
He doesn’t even know that we have failed to extract the projectile
which struck him. And even if the thing was possible....”
Then suddenly the doctor went off into a philosophical dissertation in
which he seemed to be both at his ease and at a loss, as in a familiar
labyrinth.
“We have accomplished much--very much. We have even restored the dead
to life; but we cannot restore all the dead to life. There are a few
very difficult problems.... We think we have solved them.... I do not
speak of God. The very idea of God seems to be detached from this
immense calamity. I do not speak of God, but of men. They must be
told quite simply: there are wounds which we cannot cure. Therefore,
let them stop inflicting such wounds, and the question will not arise
again. That is a solution; but the members of my profession are too
proud to make that suggestion to the world, and the world is too mad
to listen.”
My respect for this digression prevented me from interrupting; when,
however, he had finished, I whispered:
“Really, you say this missile----?”
“You can’t get at it, you understand. Beyond reach! It’s rather
degrading for a proud man to admit it, but at least it’s honest. And,
besides, it’s a fact. Man placed it there; and it is beyond his power
to remove it.”
Though embarrassed by the presence of the doctor, I was deeply moved by
his words.
“Yet, in spite of it, one can live----”
“No,” he said in a grave voice, “one can only die.”
We walked as far as the edge of the wood. The clear light of an
open meadow seemed to bring the doctor back within the bounds of
professional etiquette; for he said in a different tone:
“Excuse me, sir, for having made you consider things which must seem
strange to a man with your point of view. I do not regret having taken
this opportunity to speak to you about Dauche. He hasn’t, I believe,
any near relations in uninvaded territory. You are interested in him,
and I must warn you: he is lost. I’m going to add, since you seek his
friendship, that at any moment something will happen to him, bringing
death rapidly in its train.”
I had only known Dauche for a short time, but I was overwhelmed.
Some meaningless words came to my lips. I said something like “How
terrible!” But the doctor, with a pale smile, ended by saying:
“Alas! sir, you will do as I and many others have done: you will get
used to living in the presence of men who yet share our world, but of
whom one knows without a shadow of doubt that they are already dead.”
* * * * *
I could not get accustomed to such a thing. The conversation had taken
place towards noon. I spent the rest of the day in avoiding the sight
of Dauche--cowardly conduct which found justification in my inability
to conceal my thoughts.
Night found me deprived of sleep, but it was doubly useful: it gave me
time to get the better of certain impressions, and enabled me to plead
sickness for my changed disposition.
As I was getting out of bed, Dauche suggested that we should both go
for a walk in the woods. I was on the point of refusing; but his smile
was so affectionate and engaging that I hadn’t the courage to pretend
illness. Besides, the weather was radiant.
The brilliant sunshine in which some vigour still remained, the
delicate tints of a landscape rich in the mists of early morning, and
perhaps a healthy desire to be cheerful and forget--all that suddenly
led my thoughts away from the depths into which they had sunk.
Dauche began running amid the tall grass, which was slowly fading to
a pale amber. His laughter, you would have said, was that of a boy.
Recounting all kinds of anecdotes and sayings, he played the games
loved by his own children, and sometimes he used to stop suddenly and
speak with respect and affection of the child he did not yet know, and
of the mother who waited for him in exile.
No natural thing seemed too trifling or unworthy of attention: he
delighted in the scent of the flowers, spared a momentary glance for
every object, rubbed the fragrant herbs between his fingers, and tasted
the blackberries and hazel nuts from the thickets.
He made me notice a thousand things whose existence until then, I blush
to think, I was scarcely aware of. He dragged me after him through an
endless series of adventures, and I could only follow him, awkwardly
and grumbling, like an old man forced to dance a _ronde_.
We were returning to the Château, congratulating ourselves on our
appetite and on the good time that we had had, when, in the bend of a
path, the words and the warning of the doctor burst with a shock upon
my consciousness. It was like a sharp imperious rap of the knuckle
against a door. I was aware then that I had never ceased thinking of it
in my subconsciousness. But looking once again at Dauche, sturdy and
blond like an ear of corn in the splendour of noon, I shook my head,
saying decidedly, “This worthy doctor is mistaken.”
And, during the whole of that day, I remained happy.
The next day, as I took a long time getting up, and, musing idly,
counted the gay flowers on the curtains, I caught, not far from me,
the regular breathing of Dauche, who was still sleeping. Immediately a
voice whispered in my ear, “That man is going to die.”
I turned over on my other side, and the voice repeated, “That man over
there is a dead man.”
Then I was seized with a desire to go away,--far away from Dauche and
from the Château, and to bury myself in the noise and activity of
civilian France.
I was completely awake, and began to reason the matter out with cold
deliberation.
“After all, I’ve known this man for so short a time and can do nothing
to help him. He has been in the hands of skilled surgeons who have
exhausted all the resources of their art for him.... I would forget
his terrible fate, as I had every right to in view of the fact that it
was shared by a large number of young men equally worthy of attention.
My presence could be of no use to him, and to be with him must indeed
often draw upon those reserves of moral energy of which I was strongly
in need.”
These arguments ended in my asking the doctor, when I found myself
alone with him that same morning on some pretext or other, to hasten my
removal to another hospital.
“From the present state of your wound,” he said to me, “I see no
objection to it. I’ll see the thing is done.”
This ready assent, though so gratifying, caused me some surprise. But
my eye meeting the doctor’s, I found him looking so sad and perplexed
that I was ashamed.
I was, indeed, so upset by my weakness that at the end of a quarter of
an hour I went again to the doctor and asked if it wasn’t possible for
me to change my mind, and to remain at the Château de S---- until I had
completely recovered.
He smiled with a queer satisfied expression and assured me I could stay
as long as I liked.
My decision, arrived at after so much delay and evasion, brought calm
to my mind. I passed most of the day in my room and found diversion
in reading. Towards evening a soldier from a regiment stationed near
us, taking French leave, came to see us and invited us to hear two
musicians of his regiment who were giving a concert in an orange garden.
Though I had no precise intellectual understanding of music, I highly
appreciated it. And at that time I was, surely, in a position to remark
how a succession of notes and chords can interpret one’s prevailing
mood and quicken its emotions.
A violin sonata of Bach was being played with piano accompaniment.
Several times I felt as if an invisible and unknown person touched me
on the arm and whispered, “How can you forget he is going to die?”
I got up as soon as the concert ended and went quickly away, suffering
veritable torture.
“What is the matter?” asked Dauche, running after me. “You seem ill or
unhappy.”
“Both,” I replied, in a voice I could no longer control. “Didn’t you
hear the music of the violin?”
“Yes,” he said musingly; “it was pure joy.”
I looked at him furtively and withdrew nothing. But that evening, alone
with my thoughts in the dark, I understood that chance had reserved for
me a strange rôle to play in the fate of my friend--Dauche was doomed:
he had to die: he was about to die; but some one else, in some kind of
way, had to suffer his death-agony....
* * * * *
I am not, I protest, different from other people. The war had severely
tried me, but my imagination remained unclouded, and my wound was not
of such a kind as to impair the normal working of a healthy average
brain.
I am, therefore, thoroughly persuaded that the tense experience I
was to undergo, from that day, would have equally afflicted any man
confronted with the same calamitous circumstances.
In spite of the sinister life of the battlefield, I was to be in
the presence of a form of death new and terrible in its duration.
It is hardly possible to live without at every moment visualising
what is going to happen at the next; and it was tragic to bear in
one’s consciousness a certainty which froze, at birth, every plan and
intention. Illness creates, in ordinary life, like conditions; but
their misery is tempered by hope, or even by the relief which comes
from resignation. On account of the war I was to undergo an agonising
experience that was unique, and to live by the side of a man to whom I
knew the frightful day of reckoning would suddenly come, and who had no
future except that which existed in hope and ignorance.
This ignorance of ourselves is extremely precious, and makes us envy
that sovereign ignorance of the beasts and plants. It enabled Dauche
to live cheerfully on the edge of the abyss. I was there to assume the
burden of the tragedy, as if it were alien to the human rightness of
things that so much suffering should take place without a conscious
victim.
The first days of November had come. Autumn was growing less
resplendent. We had not given up our walks. I was forced to continue
them in spite of myself, for dying Nature seemed to be giving intense
expression to our tragic friendship.
We often climbed the hill which looked over the plain of Rheims.
Military life seemed, like the sap of the plants, to be getting stiff
and cold and withdrawing into the earth. The armies were preparing for
their winter sleep. The guns boomed wearily and without vigour. The
bareness of the trees revealed the signs of war which during summer
were hidden beneath the foliage.
Autumn made me feel more acutely the fate that was to strike down my
friend, and Dauche himself made me realise with a cruel relentlessness
the fate of all men. The thought that this man was going to die weighed
so much on my mind that I was left without courage, weak and useless.
And, in fact, it was the helplessness of man which seemed to me to be
solely evident as I gazed at the curtain of poplar trees lit up with an
elusive glory.
Then I was powerless before the terrible thought which haunted me: “He
will never see all this again.”
There is in the memoirs of Saint-Simon a frightful page on the death
of Louis XIV. The historian cannot describe any of the gestures of the
dying monarch without repeating, with a persistence inspired by hate:
“And it was for the last time.”
In the same way I constantly thought, when I saw my friend admiring the
beauty of autumn: “It’s for the last time....” But my thoughts, on the
contrary, were full of pain and compassion.
After long hours at our outpost on the hill, we used to make up our
minds to return when the light of the rockets began to adorn the
twilight with pale constellations.
Dauche appeared calm, cheerful, almost happy, as if he were having
continual glimpses of hope.
He used to make plans: that was unendurable, and I felt so irritated
that I once said:
“How happy you must be to dare to make plans at such a time as this!”
The phrase was quite vague and general; but as soon as it was uttered
it appeared to me cruel and malevolent. I was trying to think how to
re-say it when Dauche replied:
“As long as your heart beats isn’t that an adventure in itself? And,
besides, you must defy the future if you are not to fear it.”
These words, so full of wisdom, perplexed me without affording me any
comfort. They only gave rise to another cause for anxiety. Did Dauche
have any inkling of his position?
My mind was at that time so acutely affected by the secret that haunted
me that, for several days, the question tortured me.
To-day, when the lapse of time enables me to look at things with the
necessary perspective, I can state that Dauche was unaware of the
calamity awaiting him. In fact, I never saw anything which made me
suppose he ever felt a twinge of uneasiness. I cannot recall any word,
allusion or weakness which, had he been aware, would not have failed to
escape him and reveal to me the depths of his consciousness.
But on one occasion I was again assailed by doubt. A fellow-soldier in
my regiment, rescued by the Red Cross, lay dying, fatally wounded in
one of these numerous little scraps which have made Hill 108 the open
wound of our sector. We went to see him on his death-bed, and at once I
hastened to get Dauche away from the room, in which he was inclined to
linger.
“He is, after all, better so,” I remarked, to break a painful silence.
“D’you think so? Do you really think so?” the young man replied.
A mysterious impulse, which was not mere chance, made us look into one
another’s eyes; and in those of my friend, usually so clear, I was
aware of something that quivered, elusive, frantic, like a wreck of a
ship lost in the desolate wastes of the sea.
I endeavoured to change the conversation, and I succeeded. Dauche
turned back towards life, breathing deeply, and soon breaking into
shouts of laughter, in which I joined quite genuinely.
In spite of this alarming incident, I had to recognise that Dauche
suspected nothing. What I saw in his eyes that day I would have,
without a doubt, surprised in every human look. Moreover, the flesh is
aware of things of which the mind is not, and the sharp anguish behind
that look was perhaps like one of those mute cries of the animal, which
are uttered without the inspiration or recognition of consciousness.
* * * * *
Dauche’s wound was now healed over. Mine required very little
attention. There was no difficulty about my recovery. I was waiting
for something else. I understood that perfectly when one day Dauche
asked me why I remained so long in the fighting zone. I hit upon a
reply in which I pleaded our great friendship and that I had few
attachments within the country. But when I faced the question myself I
saw quite well what was the real motive of my stay at S----. Always I
was waiting for that something to happen.
In spite of these moods, the affection I had for Dauche continued to
grow. It had deepened with my pity, and the certainty that death would
shortly claim him contributed not a little to exalt it. I was by nature
inclined to be emotional, and I became passionately devoted to him. I
experienced all the apprehensions of a woman who tends a sick child,
and is filled with despair on the slightest symptoms or movements.
There was in the park a tennis court, on which a few worm-eaten
wickets were lying. Dauche hit them often with some worn bowls which
the moisture was fast rotting. One morning, as he was throwing one
of these bowls, it crumbled into pieces between his fingers, causing
him to turn and stumble. At once he raised his hand to his brow, and I
thought he staggered. Already I was upon him, and I caught him in my
arms.
“What is the matter with you?” he said, seeing my discomposed features.
“I thought your head was giving you pain.”
“No,” he replied smiling; “not at all. I was readjusting my bandages.”
Another time, when I dropped a book I was running through very
abstractedly, he bent down, with his usual alacrity, to pick it up.
I thought he was slow in rising again, as if he was trying to master
an attack of giddiness. Leaning forward, I at once took the book from
his hands. His eyes were veiled with a thin reddish film. Perhaps I
imagined that, for it did not last a moment.
“I forbid you,” I said, making a painful effort to be jocular--“I
forbid you to play any other part than that of a convalescent.”
He looked at me, amazed, and asked:
“Do you want me to believe that I am ill?”
This reply showed me how tactless I had been, and I saw that I must
carefully take myself in hand if I were to hide the anxiety which
obsessed me.
Henceforth I was never free from it. I noticed everything my friend ate
or drank, not daring to advise him, and itching sometimes to do so.
I got clear away by myself and read in secret some medical treatise
which tended rather to lead me astray than instruct me. I made a
thousand resolutions and plans and rejected them in turn. They would
all have been ridiculous, or even comic, if death had not been at hand,
sacred and solemn.
That night I awoke startled several times, and I listened to the
breathing of my companion, convinced, with the slightest pause, the
slightest change in the rhythm, that he was dying--that he was dead.
We had not given up our walks, but I had abruptly shortened them,
without saying why. I discovered a thousand round-about ways in
order to avoid a rocky or slippery road; I pushed aside the branches
that grew across the paths with a care that could not fail to arouse
suspicion. Sometimes, in the course of a little excursion, feeling
that we had gone far from the village, I suddenly experienced an
overpowering terror which made me silent and stupid.
I had given up chess, excusing myself on the ground of fatigue,
which soon indeed was no longer feigned. A time came when all these
emotions seriously affected my health. I kept my bed for several days
without being at all rested. I would rather have been left to myself
absolutely; but the thought of Dauche going out alone and not able to
take care of himself was unendurable. I could not imagine that the
fatality was to take place without my being present, because I was
always expectant, waiting....
So he always stayed with me, and used to pass the time by reading out
to me. I often wished to stop him and, being unable to say that I
felt anxious on his account, I complained of my head. The thing is
unbelievable. It was I who looked like the man who was doomed, and it
was he who seemed to be in full possession of his strength. I was right
in what I said: I was undergoing on his behalf the pangs of death.
One night, during his first sleep, he uttered a kind of moan so
strangely animal in quality, that at once I was on my feet, and I gazed
at him for a long time in the glow of the night-light.
The emotion I felt that night was mingled with something like an
intense desire for freedom. I was horrified to discover that my sick
soul not only waited for the inevitable thing, but was dominated by a
longing for the end.
* * * * *
I got up about the beginning of December, and our first walk was in the
pinewoods that clustered on the sandy hills south of the main road from
Rheims to Soissons.
The afternoon was coming to a close. A wild west wind raged through
this war-scarred valley which, from ancient times, had borne the
ravaging ebb and flow of invasion.
We were walking side by side, feeling rather chilled and silent, given
up to those formless thoughts that find no expression in the spoken
word and which are of the very colour and fabric of the soul.
We got rather warm in climbing a hill, and when we got to the top I
suggested we should sit and rest ourselves on the trunk of a beech tree
that lay mutilated on the ground, and from which oozed a yellow liquid
streaked with purple.
I was worn out, without hope, without courage, having lost all interest
in my doings, in the condition of a man whose will fails him and who
gives up the agonising struggle.
Is it possible that there can be, between two beings, relations so
mysteriously intimate? Is it true that it was I who on that day gave up
the struggle?
Overwhelmed with misery, I stood up quite involuntarily, and, with
unseeing eyes, I gazed towards the horizon at the leaping flight of
hills bristling with trees.
Was it really a queer noise that made me turn round? Wasn’t it rather
a shock or a lacerating sensation taking place within me? The fact is
that, all of a sudden, I knew that behind me something was happening.
And then my heart began to beat violently, for it could only be the
thing--the frightful and expected thing....
It was!
Dauche had slipped from the tree-trunk. It was some time before I
recognised him; his whole body was shaken by convulsions--hideous,
inhuman, like an animal struck down by the butcher’s mallet. His feet
and his hands were contracted and twitching. His face was purple and
forced round towards the right shoulder. He foamed at the mouth and
showed his white eyeballs.
I feel a kind of shame in describing this scene. I had often been
in the presence of death, and the war had made me live in horrible
intimacy with it; but I had never seen anything so frightful and so
bestial. I, in my turn, began to tremble, as if the shiver of the
victim was contagious, and my feeling of despair and nausea grew more
intense.
That lasted for an eternity of time, during which I never moved. I
let death do its work and I waited until it had finished. Gradually,
however, I became aware of a lull, and the grip on the victim seemed to
relax.
Dauche’s body remained rigid, inert. A feeble moan escaped his lips.
At the same moment I recovered from my stupor and, in spite of my
paralysed will, I set about removing from this place what had once been
my friend.
In raising him from the ground I suffered terrible pain. His muscles
were contracted and he was terribly heavy. I caught hold of him with
my arms round his body and carried him with his breast on mine, like a
sleeping child. A thin stream of frothy saliva oozed from the corners
of his mouth, as from the snouts of cattle in harness. His head began
to sway heavily.
Night was falling. I had to put my burden down every few yards, then
take it up again.
My wound caused me acute suffering, but my mind was benumbed and my
movements almost involuntary.
I do not know how I came within sight of the Château. On reaching the
foot of the hill, suddenly, in the bend of an avenue, I met the doctor,
who had been taking a solitary walk. It was almost dark; I did not see
the expression on his face.
I placed the body on the ground, kneeled down beside it, my face
streaming with perspiration, and said, “Here he is.” Then I began to
weep.
There were cries, shouts and lights. They carried away Dauche’s body,
and I was carried too.
* * * * *
It was really two days later that Dauche died. I did not wish to see
him again. I had been placed in a room far removed from him, where I
lived in a kind of semi-delirium, asking from hour to hour, “Has the
end come? Has it ended?”
But I knew when the end came before I was told, and I let myself
fall into a dark dreamless sleep, of which I still retain the most
despairing impression.
It appears that Dauche was buried in the little cemetery skirted by the
birch and dead fir trees that are to be seen at the village of C....
in an arid field of white sand. I never could get myself to visit him
there. But I carried away with me a more sombre grave that time will
not efface.
I left the Château de S---- towards the middle of December. I was weak
and enfeebled, weary with the thought that it was now my own life I
must live, and undergo for myself the struggle of my own life and
death.