my strength, and we quiver with my
quivering.

He had not the idea of dropping his rifle so quickly as I. He yields
and sinks. I cling to him as if it were salvation. The words in his
throat make a lifeless noise. He brandishes a hand which has only
three fingers--I saw it clearly outlined against the clouds like a
fork.

Just as he totters in my arms, resisting death, a thunderous blow
strikes him in the back. His arms drop, and his head also, which is
violently doubled back, but his body is hurled against me like a
projectile, like a superhuman blast.

I have rolled on the ground; I get up, and while I am hastily trying to
find myself again I feel a light blow in the waist. What is it? I
walk forward, and still forward, with my empty hands. I see the others
pass, they go by in front of me. _I_, I advance no more. Suddenly I
fall to the ground.

* * * * * *

CHAPTER XIV

THE RUINS

I fall on my knees, and then full length. I do what so many others
have done.

I am alone on the earth, face to face with the mud, and I can no longer
move. The frightful searching of the shells alights around me. The
hoarse hurricane which does not know me is yet trying to find the place
where I am!

Then the battle goes away, and its departure is heartrending. In spite
of all my efforts, the noise of the firing fades and I am alone; the
wind blows and I am naked.

I shall remain nailed to the ground. By clinging to the earth and
plunging my hands into the depth of the swamp as far as the stones, I
get my neck round a little to see the enormous burden that my back
supports. No--it is only the immensity on me.

My gaze goes crawling. In front of me there are dark things all linked
together, which seem to seize or to embrace one another. I look at
those hills which shut out my horizon and imitate gestures and men.
The multitude downfallen there imprisons me in its ruins. I am walled
in by those who are lying down, as I was walled in before by those who
stood.

I am not in pain. I am extraordinarily calm; I am drunk with
tranquillity. Are they dead, all--those? I do not know. The dead are
specters of the living, but the living are specters of the dead.
Something warm is licking my hand. The black mass which overhangs me
is trembling. It is a foundered horse, whose great body is emptying
itself, whose blood is flowing like poor touches of a tongue on to my
ha