bad." We go forward, so weary that we can only
see the ground.

I am alone. Where is Paradis? He must have lain down in some hole, and
perhaps I did not hear his call. I meet Marthereau. "I'm looking where
I can sleep, I've been on guard," he says.

"I, too; let's look together."

"What's all the row and to-do?" says Marthereau. A mingled hubbub of
trampling and voices overflows from the communication trench that goes
off here. "The communication trenches are full of men. Who are you?"

One of those with whom we are suddenly mixed up replies, "We're the
Fifth Battalion." The newcomers stop. They are in marching order. The
one that spoke sits down for a breathing space on the curves of a
sand-bag that protrudes from the line. He wipes his nose with the back
of his sleeve.

"What are you doing here? Have they told you to come?"

"Not half they haven't told us. We're coming to attack. We're going
yonder, right up." With his head he indicates the north. The curiosity
with which we look at them fastens on to a detail. "You've carried
everything with you?"--"We chose to keep it, that's all."

"Forward!" they are ordered. They rise and proceed, incompletely awake,
their eyes puffy, their wrinkles underlined. There are young men among
them with thin necks and vacuous eyes, and old men; and in the middle,
ordinary ones. They march with a commonplace and pacific step. What
they are going to do seems to us, who did it last night, beyond human
strength. But still they go away towards the north.

"The revally of the damned," says Marthereau.

We make way for them with a sort of admiration and a sort of terror.
When they have passed, Marthereau wags his head and murmurs, "There are
some getting ready, too, on the other side, with their gray uniforms.
Do you think those chaps are feeling it about the attack? Then why have
they come? It's not their doing, I know, but it's theirs all the same,
seeing they're here.--I know, I know, but it's odd, all of it."

The sight of a passer-by alters the course of his ideas: "Tiens,
there's Truc, the big one, d'you know him? Isn't he immense and
pointed, that chap! As for me, I know I'm not quite hardly big enough;
but him, he goes too far. He always knows what's going on, that
two-yarder! For savvying everything, there's nobody going to give him
the go-by! I'll go and chivvy him about a funk-hole."

"If there's a rabbit-hole anywhere?" replies the elongated passer-by,
leaning on Marth