n yells in honour of Fumat. And each time other Fumats fall in
the mud yonder, in their appointed places.

VII

They ought not to have cut off all the light in this manner, and it
would not have been done, perhaps, if...

There is a kind of mania for organisation which is the sworn enemy of
order; in its efforts to discover the best place for everything, it ends
by diverting everything from its right function and locality, and making
everything as inopportune as itself. It was a mistake to cut off all the
lights this evening, on some pretext or the other. The rooms of the
old mansion are not packed with bales of cotton, but with men who have
anxious minds and tortured bodies.

A mournful darkness suddenly reigned; and outside, the incessant storm
that rages in this country swept along like a river in spate.

Little Rochet was dreaming in the liquid light of the lamp, with hands
crossed on his breast, and the delicate profile of an exhausted saint.

He was dreaming of vague and exquisite things, for cruel fever has
moments of generosity between two nightmares. He was dreaming so sweetly
that he forgot the abominable stench of his body, and that a smile
touched the two deep wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, set there by
a week of agony.

But all the lamps have been put out, and the noise of the hurricane has
become more insistent, and the wounded have ceased talking, for darkness
discourages conversation.

There are some places where the men with whom the shells have dealt
mercifully and whose wounds are only scratches congregate. These have
only 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 the
supreme decision of death.

Little Rochet awoke to a reality full of darkness and despair. He heard
nothing but laboured breathing round him, and rising above it all, the
violent breath of the storm. He was suddenly conscious of his lacerated
stomach, of his lost leg, and he realised that the fetid smell in the
air was the smell of his flesh. And he thought of the loving letter he
had 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 the
corridor.

"Come, come quickly. Little Rochet has thrown himself out of bed."

Holding up a candle, I take in the melancholy scene. We have to get
Rochet into