I had walked, with my hands held out in front of me, until I came upon a fence. Suddenly I knew what it was to be leaning against the parapet of hell! What a human tempest! What explosions of hatred and destruction! You would have said that a company of giants were forging the horizon of the earth with repeated blows that filled the air with countless sparks. Innumerable furtive lights gave one continuous great light that lived, throbbed and danced, dazzling the sky and the land. Jets of iridescent light were bursting in the open sky as if they fell from the blows of the steam-hammer on white-hot steel. To me who had only recently left the trenches, each of these firework displays meant something--advice, commands, desperate calls, signals for slaughter; and I interpreted this furnace as if it had expressed in words the fury and distress of the combatants. Towards Combles, on the left of Maurepas, one section above all seemed to be raging. It was just there that the junction was made between the English and the French armies; and it was there that the enemy concentrated a tumultuous and never-slackening fire. Every night, during many weeks, I saw this place lighted up with the same devouring flame. It was at each instant so intense that every instant appeared to be the decisive one. But hours, nights and months went slowly by in the eternity of time, and each of these terrible moments was only one intense outburst out of an infinity of them. Thus often the agony of wounds is such that you would hardly think it could be endured any longer. But death comes not willingly at the desire of men: it strikes at will, when it likes, where it likes, and hardly permits itself to be directed or coaxed. Morning came. Those who have seen the daybreaks of the war, after nights spent in fighting, or in the bloody work of the ambulance, will understand what is the most ugly and mournful thing in the world. For my part, I shall never forget the green and grudging light of the dawn, the desolating look of the lamps and the faces, the asphyxiating smell of men attacked by corruption, the cold shiver of the morning, like the last frozen breath of night in the congealed foliage of large trees. * * * * * My work as a stretcher-bearer was over. I could return to carpentry. I made heavy planks of green wood and thought of all sorts of things, as the mind does when robbed of sleep and overwhelmed with bitterness. Towards eight o’clock in the morning the sun was hailed by a race of flies as it was emerging painfully from the mist; and these animals began to abandon themselves to their vast daily orgy.