and THOSE WOUNDS
MUST HAVE SUFFERED. But to the last, he himself seemed aloof from
everything, 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 where
his brother has just died.

I turn back the sheet and uncover the face of the corpse. The flesh is
still 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 and amazement.
Then suddenly, he begins to cry out:

"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!"

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

Then he drops his helmet, throws himself on his knees beside the
death-bed, takes the dead face between his hands and kisses it gently
and 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 by
sobs which are like the neighing of a horse; he is blinded by his tears,
and knocks against all the furniture. He can do nothing but lament in a
broken voice:

"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!"

XXVI

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

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

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

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

For whom is the damp autumn breeze which flutters the canvas hung before
the door? For whom the billowy murmur of the pine-trees and the rays of
light crossed by a flight of insects? For whom this growling of cannon
mingling now with the landscape like one of the sounds of nature? 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 my
mind that I am alone, that I cannot make up my mind to think as when I
am alone.

For indeed we spent too many days hoping together, enduring together,
and if