of the rank and the regiment--into which, nullifying all that is yourself, you pass already as a sort of dead man. "They gather us together but they separate us!" cries a voice from the past. If there are some who escape through the meshes, it means that such "slackers" are also influential. They are uncommon, in spite of appearances, as the influential are. You, the isolated man, the ordinary man, the lowly thousand-millionth of humanity, you evade nothing, and you march right to the end of all that happens, or to the end of yourself. You will be crushed. Either you will go into the charnel house, destroyed by those who are similar to you, since war is only made by you, or you will return to your point in the world, diminished or diseased, retaining only existence without health or joy, a home-exile after absences too long, impoverished forever by the time you have squandered. Even if selected by the miracle of chance, if unscathed in the hour of victory, you also, _you_ will be vanquished. When you return into the insatiable machine of the work-hours, among your own people--whose misery the profiteers have meanwhile sucked dry with their passion for gain--the task will be harder than before, because of the war that must be paid for, with all its incalculable consequences. You who peopled the peace-time prisons of your towns and barns, begone to people the immobility of the battlefields--and if you survive, pay up! Pay for a glory which is not yours, or for ruins that others have made with your hands. Suddenly, in front of me and a few paces from my couch--as if I were in a bed, in a bedroom, and had all at once woke up--an uncouth shape rises awry. Even in the darkness I see that it is mangled. I see about its face something abnormal which dimly shines; and I can see, too, by his staggering steps, sunk in the black soil, that his shoes are empty. He cannot speak, but he brings forward the thin arm from which rags hang down and drip; and his imperfect hand, as torturing to the mind as discordant chords, points to the place of his heart. I see that heart, buried in the darkness of the flesh, in the black blood of the living--for only shed blood is red. I see him profoundly, with my heart. If he said anything he would say the words that I still hear falling, drop by drop, as I heard them yonder--"Nothing can be done, nothing." I try to move, to rid myself of him. But I cannot, I am pinioned in a sort of nightmare; and if he had not himself faded away I should have stayed there forever, dazzled in presence of his darkness. This man said nothing. He appeared like the dead thing he is. He has departed. Perhaps he has ceased to be, perhaps he has entered into death, which is not more mysterious to him than life, which he is leaving--and I have fallen back into myself. * * * * * *