Well,
perhaps you, and one or two more may have minded a little,--but
most of them did not even notice it." He kept on to stop further
remonstrances from his friend: "I am not trying to make out that you
were better than the rest, old man, there is no need for that; I only
say it because it is so. Look here," he added, turning to Clerambault,
"those who have come back and written about all this, they tell us,
of course, what they felt. But they felt more than ordinary mortals
because they were artists, and naturally everything got on their
nerves, while the rest of us were tougher. Now that I think of it,
that makes it more terrible; when you read these stories that sicken
you, and make the hair stand up on your head, you don't get the full
effect. Think of fellows looking on, smoking, chaffing, busy with
something else. You have to, you know, or you would go all to pieces....
All the same, it is astonishing what human creatures can get used
to! I believe they could make themselves comfortable at the bottom of
a sewer. It really disgusts a man, for I was just the same myself. You
mustn't suppose that I was like this chap here, always staring at
a death's head. Like everybody else, I thought the whole thing was
idiotic; but life is like that, as far as I can see! ... We did what
we had to do, and let it go at that;--the end? Well, one is as good as
another, whether you lose your own skin or the war comes to an end, it
finishes it up all the same; and in the meantime you are alive, you
eat, you sleep, your bowels--excuse me, one must tell things as they
are!... Do you want to know what is at the bottom of it all, Sir? The
real truth is that we do not care for life, or not enough. In one of
your articles you say very truly that life is the great thing;--only
you wouldn't think so to see most people at this minute! Not much life
about them; they all seem drowsy, waiting for the last sleep; it looks
as if they said to themselves: 'We are flat on our backs now, no need
to stir an inch.' No, we don't make enough out of life. And then
people are always trying to spoil it for you. From the time you are
a child they keep on telling you about the beauty of death, or about
dead folks. In the catechism, in the history books, they are
always shouting: '_Mourir pour la Patrie!_' It is either popery or
patriotism, whichever you please; and then this life of the present
day is a perfect nuisance; it looks as if it was made expressly to