You're
doing no good."

"I'm the owner of my skin, lieutenant," Termite replied, without
stopping or looking round.

He placed the ladder, climbed up and unhooked the dead man. Around
them, against the plaster of the wall, there broke a surge of deafening
shocks and white fire. He descended with the body very skillfully,
laid it on the ground, and remaining doubled up he ran back to us--to
fall on the captain, who had witnessed the scene.

"My friend," the captain said, "I've been told that you were an
anarchist. But I've seen that you're brave, and that's already more
than half of a Frenchman."

He held out his hand. Termite took it, pretending to be little
impressed by the honor.

When he returned to us he said, while his hand rummaged his hedgehog's
beard, "That poor lad--I don't know why--p'raps it's stupid--but I was
thinking of his mother."

We looked at him with a sort of respect. First, because he had gone up
and then because he had passed through the hail of iron and won. There
was no one among us who did not earnestly wish he had tried and
succeeded in what Termite had just done. But assuredly we did not a
bit understand this strange soldier.

A lull had come in the bombardment. "It's over," we concluded.

As we returned we gathered round Termite and one spoke for the rest.

"You're an anarchist, then?"

"No," said Termite, "I'm an internationalist. That's why I enlisted."

"Ah!"

He tried to throw light on his words. "You understand, I'm against all
wars."

"All wars! But there's times when war's good. There's defensive war."

"No," said Termite again, "there's only offensive war; because if there
wasn't the offensive there wouldn't be the defensive."

"Ah!" we replied.

We went on chatting, dispassionately and for the sake of talking,
strolling in the dubious security of the streets which were sometimes
darkened by falls of wreckage, under a sky of formidable surprises.

"All the same, isn't it chaps like you that prevented France from being
prepared?"

"There's not enough chaps like me to prevent anything; and if there'd
been more, there wouldn't have been any war."

"It's not to us, it's to the Boches and the others that you must say
that."

"It's to all the world," said Termite; "that's why I'm an
internationalist."

While Termite was slipping away somewhere else his questioner indicated
by a gesture that he did not understand. "Never mind," he said to us,
"that