monotony of the story of wounds: "Nom de Dieu! In that place I
should think the bullets were touching each other."--"His head was
bored through from one temple to the other. You could have passed a
thread through."

"Those beggars were an hour before they lifted their fire and stopped
peppering us." Nearer to me some one gabbles at the end of his story,
"When I'm sleeping I dream that I'm killing him over again!"

Other memories are called up and buzz about among the buried wounded;
it is like the purring of countless gear-wheels in a machine that turns
and turns. And I hear afar him who repeats from his seat, "What's the
use of worrying?" in all possible tones, commanding a pitiful,
sometimes like a prophet and anon like one shipwrecked; he metrifies
with his cry the chorus of choking and plaintive voices that try so
terribly to extol their suffering.

Some one comes forward, blindly feeling the wall with his stick, and
reaches me. It is Farfadet! I call him, and he turns nearly towards me
to tell me that one eye is gone, and the other is bandaged as well. I
give him my place, take him by the shoulders and make him sit down. He
submits, and seated at the base of the wall waits patiently, with the
resignation of his clerkly calling, as if in a waiting-room.

I come to anchor a little farther away, in an empty space where two
prostrate men are talking to each other in low voices; they are so near
to me that I hear them without listening. They are two soldiers of the
Foreign Legion; their helmets and greatcoats are dark yellow.

"It's not worth while to make-believe about it," says one of them
banteringly. "I'm staying here this time. It's finished--my bowels are
shot through. If I were in a hospital, in a town, they'd operate on me
in time, and it might stick up again. But here! It was yesterday I got
it. We're two or three hours from the Bethune road, aren't we? And how
many hours, think you, from the road to an ambulance where they can
operate? And then, when are they going to pick us up? It's nobody's
fault, I dare say; but you've got to look facts in the face. Oh, I know
it isn't going to be any worse from now than it is, but it can't be
long, seeing I've a hole all the way through my parcel of guts. You,
your foot'll get all right, or they'll put you another one on. But I'm
going to die."

"Ah!" said the other, convinced by the reasoning of his neighbor. The
latter goes on--"Listen, Dominique. You've led a ba