r, my eye on
the white marble, it was like a strip of a long dream of the past, a
scanty memory that clothed me. There I used to write to Marie, and
there I read again the letters I received from her, in which she said,
"Nothing has changed since you were away."

One Sunday, when I was beached on a seat in the square and weeping with
yawns under the empty sky, I saw a young woman go by. By reason of
some resemblance in outline, I thought of a woman who had loved me. I
recalled the period when life was life, and that beautiful caressing
body of once-on-a-time. It seemed to me that I held her in my arms, so
close that I felt her breath, like velvet, on my face.

We got a glimpse of the captain at one review. Once there was talk of
a new draft for the front, but it was a false rumor. Then we said,
"There'll never be any war for us," and that was a relief.

My name flashed to my eyes in a departure list posted on the wall. My
name was read out at morning parade, and it seemed to me that it was
the only one they read. I had no time to get ready. In the evening of
the next day our detachment passed out of the barracks by the little
gate.

CHAPTER XI

AT THE WORLD'S END

"We're going to Alsace," said the well-informed. "To the Somme," said
the better-informed, louder.

We traveled thirty-six hours on the floor of a cattle truck, wedged and
paralyzed in the vice of knapsacks, pouches, weapons and moist bodies.
At long intervals the train would begin to move on again. It has left
an impression with me that it was chiefly motionless.

We got out, one afternoon, under a sky crowded with masses of darkness,
in a station recently bombarded and smashed, and its roof left like a
fish-bone. It overlooked a half-destroyed town, where, amid a foul
whiteness of ruin, a few families were making shift to live in the
rain.

"'Pears we're in the Aisne country," they said.

A downpour was in progress. Shivering, we busied ourselves with
unloading and distributing bread, our hands numbed and wet, and then
ate it hurriedly while we stood in the road, which gleamed with heavy
parallel brush-strokes of gray paint as far as the eye could see. Each
looked after himself, with hardly a thought for the next man. On each
side of the road were deserts without limits, flat and flabby, with
trees like posts, and rusty fields patched with green mud.

"Shoulder packs, and forward!" Adjutant Marcassin ordered.

Where wer