the Captain, has sent his wife a necklace
of pearls. . . . And you send only such insignificant things!"

The virtuous German had been advancing heroically with the double desire
of enlarging his country and of making valuable gifts to his offspring.
"Deutschland uber alles!" But their most cherished illusions had fallen
into the burial ditch in company with thousands of comrades-at-arms fed
on the same dreams.

Desnoyers could imagine the impatience on the other side of the Rhine,
the pitiful women who were waiting and waiting. The lists of the dead
had, perhaps, overlooked the missing ones; and the letters kept coming
and coming to the German lines, many of them never reaching their
destination. "Why don't you answer! Perhaps you are not writing so as to
give us a great surprise. Don't forget the necklace! Send us a piano.
A carved china cabinet for the dining room would please us greatly. The
French have so many beautiful things!" . . .

The bare cross rose stark and motionless above the lime-blanched land.
Near it the little flags were fluttering their wings, moving from side
to side like a head shaking out a smiling, ironical protest--No! . . .
No!

The automobile continued on its painful way. The guide was now pointing
to a distant group of graves. That was undoubtedly the place where the
regiment had been fighting. So the vehicle left the main road, sinking
its wheels in the soft earth, having to make wide detours in order to
avoid the mounds scattered about so capriciously by the casualties of
the combat.

Almost all of the fields were ploughed. The work of the farmer extended
from tomb to tomb, making them more prominent as the morning sun forced
its way through the enshrouding mists.

Nature, blind, unfeeling and silent, ignoring individual existence and
taking to her bosom with equal indifference, a poor little animal or a
million corpses, was beginning to smile under the late winter suns.

The fountains were still crusted with their beards of ice; the earth
snapped as the feet weighed down its hidden crystals; the trees, black
and sleeping, were still retaining the coat of metallic green in which
the winter had clothed them; from the depths of the earth still issued
an acute, deadly chill, like that of burned-out planets. . . . But
Spring had already girded herself with flowers in her palace in the
tropics, and was saddling with green her trusty steed, neighing with
impatience. Soon they would race