He remembered, too, in what spirit he had read three years earlier a novel by Zola called _The Soil_. He had seen a copy at the railway bookstall at Boulogne with “Suppressed English Edition” printed in thick black lettering across the yellow cover. He was on his way back from leave and he had hoped that the book would help him to pass agreeably the long journey to Baupaume. But he had found it heavy even in its obscenity, and he had discarded it for the light suggestion of _Fantasia_ and _Le Rire_. Later, however, during the nights of wakefulness in a lonely post, he had returned, for want of anything else to read, to Zola, and he had soon found to his surprise that, instead of turning the pages quickly with prurient fingers in search of the flavoured passage, he was reading the book carefully, word by word, letting it pass slowly before his eyes--a savage spectacle of human life held captive to the soil, of men and women whose actions and desires were controlled by their allegiance to it, and of that fierce ferment of deceit, greed, falsehood, wantonness that the soil turned in its own way to its own use. It had seemed strange to him, though, that Jean, an old soldier, should be prepared, even after so much adversity, to rejoin the army. It was easy to forget; memory, concerned with the general proportions of a picture, selected what it chose; Miller knew that, but could anyone, he had asked himself, forget the fatigue of a long march, the chill of nightfall in the open, the heartache of separation, the fields of blood and pain. And, putting the book down on the table, he had walked to the head of his dug-out steps and looked out over the long stretch of mangled country. Himself, he never could forget.