olding his tiny fist, it felt as if I'd got hold of the little warm
neck of a swallow, you know."

And alongside this sentimental avowal, here is the passing revelation
of another mind: "Don't I know the 547th! Rather! Listen, it's a funny
regiment. They've got a poilu in it who's called Petitjean, another
called Petitpierre, and another called Petitlouis. Old man, it's as I'm
telling you; that's the kind of regiment it is."

As I begin to pick out a way with a view to leaving the cavern, there
is a great noise down yonder of a fall and a chorus of exclamations. It
is the hospital sergeant who has fallen. Through the breach that he was
clearing of its soft and bloody relics, a bullet has taken him in the
throat, and he is spread out full length on the ground. His great
bewildered eyes are rolling and his breath comes foaming. His mouth and
the lower part of his face are quickly covered with a cloud of rosy
bubbles. They place his head on a bag of bandages, and the bag is
instantly soaked with blood. An attendant cries that the packets of
lint will be spoiled, and they are needed. Something else is sought on
which to put the head that ceaselessly makes a light and discolored
froth. Only a loaf can be found, and it is slid under the spongy hair.

While they hold the sergeant's hand and question him, he only slavers
new heaps of bubbles, and we see his great black-bearded head across
this rosy cloud. Laid out like that, he might be a deep-breathing
marine monster, and the transparent red foam gathers and creeps up to
his great hazy eyes, no longer spectacled.

Then his throat rattles. It is a childish rattle, and he dies moving
his head to right and to left as though he were trying very gently to
say "No."

Looking on the enormous inert mass, I reflect that he was a good man.
He had an innocent and impressionable heart. How I reproach myself that
I sometimes abused him for the ingenuous narrowness of his views, and
for a certain clerical impertinence that he always had! And how glad I
am in this distressing scene--yes, happy enough to tremble with
joy--that I restrained myself from an angry protest when I found him
stealthily reading a letter I was writing, a protest that would
unjustly have wounded him! I remember the time when he exasperated me
so much by his dissertation on France and the Virgin Mary. It seemed
impossible to me that he could utter those thoughts sincerely. Why
should he not have been sincere? Has h