one else.
Afterward, if they survived, they went to prison; but if it could be
proved that they were indeed suffering from _cafard_, they got off with
light sentences.

Officers of the Legion old enough to have won a few medals seemed to
respect the _cafard_ and make allowances for his deadly work. If the men
did not survive, they--what was left of them--went to the cemetery to
rest under small black crosses marked with name and number, their only
mourners the great cypresses which sighed with every breath of wind from
the mountains.

One August night of blazing heat and moonlight Max could not sleep.
There had been a scene in the dormitory which had got every man out of
bed, but an hour after the tired soldiers were dead to the world
again--all save Max, who felt as if a white fire like the moonlight was
raging in his brain.

He lay still, as though he were gagged and bound, lest a sigh, or a
rustle in turning over--as he longed to turn--might waken a neighbour.
The hours set apart for the Legion's repose were sacred, so profoundly
sacred that any man who made the least noise at night or during the
afternoon siesta was given good cause to regret his awkwardness. The
most inveterate snorers were cured, or half killed; and to-night, in
this great room with its double row of beds, the trained silence of the
sleepers seemed unnatural, almost terrible, especially after the horror
that had broken it. Max had never before felt the oppression of this
deathlike stillness. Usually he slept as the rest slept; but now, weary
as he was, he resigned himself to lie staring through the slow hours,
till the orderly's call, "_Au jus!_" should rouse the men to swallow
their coffee before reveille.

The dormitory, white with moonlight streaming through curtainless open
windows, seemed to Max like a mausoleum. He could see the still, flat
forms, uncovered and prone on their narrow beds, like carven figures of
soldiers on tombs. He alone was alive among a company of statues. The
men could not be human to sleep so soon and so soundly after the thing
that had happened!

In his hot brain the scene repeated itself constantly in bright, moving
pictures. He had been rather miserable before going to bed, and had
longed for forgetfulness. Sleep had brought its balm, but suddenly he
had started awake to see a man bending over him, a dark shape with
lifted arms that fumbled along the shelf above the bed. On that shelf
was the famous _paquetage