I said nothing. I thought of that devastated little valley where I had spent the first few weeks of the summer in front of the Plémont hill--the deadly hours I spent looking at the ruins of Lassigny between the torn and jagged poplars, and the apple-trees blighted with the horror on the edge of the chaotic road, and the repulsive shell-holes full of green slime and swarming with life, and the mute face of the Château de Plessier, and the commanding hill which a cosmic upheaval alone had made capable of giving rise to grim forebodings. There during long nights I had breathed the fetid air of the corpse-laden fields. In the most despairing loneliness I had been in turn terrified of death and longing for it. And then some one came along one day to tell me that “You can go back behind the lines. Your third brother has been killed.” And many of the men looked at me, seeming to think with the Adjutant, “Your third brother is dead. In a sense you are lucky.” Those were my thoughts as I entered upon my new duties. We were walking along the plateau, which stood out before heaven, erect as an altar, piled with millions of creatures ready for the sacrifice. It had been dry for several days, and we lived under the rule of King Dust. The dust is the price we pay for fine weather: it attacks the fighting pack, intrudes upon its work, its food and its thoughts; it makes your lips filthy, your teeth crunch, and your eyes inflamed. But when it disappears the reign of mud begins, and then we passionately desire to stagnate again in the dust. Far away, like idly moving rivers, large columns of dust marked all the roads in the district, and were filtered by the wind as they flowed over the countryside. The light of day was polluted with it, as the sky was ravaged by great flights of aeroplanes, and the silence violated and degraded, and the earth with its vegetation torn and mutilated. I was not that day by any means disposed to be happy, but all this plunged me into the deepest gloom. Looking all around me I found the only places where I could rest my eyes were in the innocent looks of the horses or on some unfortunate timid men who worked on the roadside. Everything else was nothing but a bristling gesture of war. Night had fallen when we arrived at the city of tents. The Adjutant took me to a tent and found me a place on some straw which was strongly reminiscent of the pigsty. I took off my knapsack, lay down and fell asleep. * * * * * I got up with the dawn and, wandering through the mist, tried to find my bearings. There was the road leading from Albert--worn, hollowed, and terribly overrun. It bore the never-ending stream of wounded. Alongside of it stood the city of tents, with its streets, its suburbs, and its public squares. Behind the tents, a cemetery. That was all.