e outburst of the great catastrophe, seeing the volume of
blood and fire, listening to the uproar, smelling the stench of the
vast gangrene, we thought that all passions would be laid aside, like
cumbersome weapons, and that we should give ourselves up with clean
hearts and empty hands to battle against the fiery nightmare. He who
fights and defends himself needs a pure heart: so does he who wanders
among charnel houses, gives drink to parched lips, washes fevered faces
and bathes wounds. We thought there would be a great forgetfulness of
self and of former hopes, and of the whole world. O Union of pure hearts
to meet the ordeal!

But no! The first explosion was tremendous, yet hardly had its echoes
died away when the rag-pickers were already at work among the ruins, in
quest 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 stretchers
with their burdens of anguish.

At this hour one is inclined to distrust everything, man and the
universe, and the future of Right. But we cannot have any doubts as to
the 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 that
Beal, who has a gaping wound in the stomach, holds out his hands to me
with a little smile, I will get up and hold his hands in mine, for he is
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 had to
find time to go and bury Bride.

It is not a very long ceremony. The burial-ground is near. About a dozen
of us follow the lantern, slipping in the mud, and stumbling over the
graves. Here we are at the wall, and here is the long ditch, always
open, which every day is prolonged a little to the right, and filled
in a little to the left. Here is the line of white crosses, and the
flickering 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
be a grave-digger. One must have the knack of it. And the night is very
dark and the mud very sticky.

At last the body is at the bottom of the trench, and the muddy ropes
are withdrawn. The little consumptive priest who stands at the graveside
murmurs the prayer for the dead. The rain beats in our faces. The
familiar demon of Artois, the win