nd where the sorry
crowd of living men endures the faint but musty savor of a tomb; and
Marthereau looks at me. He still hears, as I do, the unknown soldier
who said, "Wilhelm is a stinking beast, but Napoleon was a great man,"
and who extolled the martial ardor of the little boy still left to him.
Marthereau droops his arms and wags his weary head--and the shadow of
the double gesture is thrown on the partition by the lean light in a
sudden caricature.

"Ah!" says my humble companion, "we're all of us not bad sorts, and
we're unlucky, and we're poor devils as well. But we're too stupid,
we're too stupid!"

Again he turns his eyes on me. In his bewhiskered and poodle-like face
I see his fine eyes shining in wondering and still confused
contemplation of things which he is setting himself to understand in
the innocence of his obscurity.

We come out of the uninhabitable shelter; the weather has bettered a
little; the snow has melted, and all is soiled anew. "The wind's licked
up the sugar," says Marthereau.

* * * * *

I am deputed to accompany Mesnil Joseph to the refuge on the Pylones
road. Sergeant Henriot gives me charge of the wounded man and hands me
his clearing order. "If you meet Bertrand on the way," says Henriot,
"tell him to look sharp and get busy, will you?" Bertrand went away on
liaison duty last night and they have been waiting for him for an hour;
the captain is getting impatient and threatens to lose his temper.

I get under way with Joseph, who walks very slowly, a little paler than
usual, and still taciturn. Now and again he halts, and his face
twitches. We follow the communication trenches, and a comrade appears
suddenly. It is Volpatte, and he says, "I'm going with you to the foot
of the hill." As he is off duty, he is wielding a magnificent twisted
walking-stick, and he shakes in his hand like castanets the precious
pair of scissors that never leaves him.

All three of us come out of the communication trench when the slope of
the land allows us to do it without danger of bullets--the guns are not
firing. As soon as we are outside we stumble upon a gathering of men.
It is raining. Between the heavy legs planted there like little trees
on the gray plain in the mist we see a dead man. Volpatte edges his way
in to the horizontal form upon which these upright ones are waiting;
then he turns round violently and shouts to us, "It's Pepin!"

"Ah!" says Joseph, who is already almost fainting. He le