The soldier Jean Liotard lay, face to the earth, by the bank of the river Drôme. He lay where the grass and trees ended, and between him and the shrivelled green current was much sandy foreshore, for summer was at height, and the snows had long finished melting and passing down. The burning sun had sucked up all moisture, the earth was parched, but to-day a cool breeze blew, willow and aspen leaves were fluttering and hissing as if millions of tiny kisses were being given up there; and a few swathes of white cloud were drawn, it seemed--not driven--along the blue. The soldier Jean Liotard had fixed his eyes on the ground, where was nothing to see but a few dry herbs. He had "_cafard_," for he was due to leave the hospital to-morrow and go up before the military authorities, for "_prolongation_." There he would answer perfunctory questions, and be told at once: _Au dépôt_; or have to lie naked before them that some "_major_" might prod his ribs, to find out whether his heart, displaced by shell-shock, had gone back sufficiently to normal position. He had received one "_prolongation_," and so, wherever his heart now was, he felt sure he would not get another. "_Au dépôt_" was the fate before him, fixed as that river flowing down to its death in the sea. He had "_cafard_"--the little black beetle in the brain, which gnaws and eats and destroys all hope and heaven in a man. It had been working at him all last week, and now he was at a monstrous depth of evil and despair. To begin again the cursed barrack-round, the driven life, until in a month perhaps, packed like bleating sheep, in the troop-train, he made that journey to the fighting line again--"_À la hachette--à la hachette!_"