C’était une vieille si pauvre qu’elle avait obstinément refusé d’abandonner le village. “J’aime mieux mourir ici,” avait-elle dit. On l’avait laissée. Elle gîtait misérablement dans sa cabane sur la paille et n’avait pas d’autre nourriture que celle que lui donnaient les soldats. Quand elle vit les deux jeunes cadavres et les préparatifs, elle dit: --Attendez un instant avant de les enfermer. Je vais chercher quelque chose. Elle alla fouiller la paille sur laquelle elle couchait et en tira le drap qu’elle gardait pour sa sépulture. Et revenant: --On n’enfermera pas, dit-elle, ces beaux garçons le visage contre les planches. Je veux les ensevelir. Elle coupa la toile en deux et les mit chacun dans son suaire, puis elle leur posa un baiser sur le front, en disant chaque fois: --Pour la mère, mon cher enfant. * * * * * Nous nous tûmes quand le Général eut ainsi parlé et il n’était pas le seul à avoir des larmes dans les yeux. Une prière d’amour se formait dans nos cœurs pour la France. MAURICE BARRÈS _de l’Académie Française_ 1915 THE BROTHERS [TRANSLATION] I’m not fond of telling this story, said the General, because each time, like the old fool I am, it brings tears to my eyes ... but the best of France is in it. It’s about two boys, astonishingly gifted, full of heart and brains, that nobody could meet without liking. I knew them when they were tiny little fellows. At the time war broke out, the younger one, François, had just passed his examinations for St. Cyr. He had no time to enter; he was rushed along in the wholesale promotion and made second lieutenant then and there. Fancy what it meant to him--epaulettes and battles at nineteen! His elder brother, Jacques, a boy of twenty,--a really remarkable fellow in his studies, was hard at work in the Law School, where he had taken honors. He went off to the front as second lieutenant, too. The two brothers were thrown together for the first time in the same brigade of the “iron division,” as it was called--the younger in the 26th of the line, the other in the 27th. They were quartered in a ruined village, and each day they met, making themselves liked everywhere and enjoying a great popularity with the soldiers on account of their youth and friendliness. It soon got round that the St. Cyr boy’s regiment was going to get some hot fighting. Jacques said nothing, but he went to his colonel and asked for permission to take the place of his brother, whom he considered too little prepared for what promised to be a violent engagement. The colonel recognized the generosity of this request, but he cut the young man short. “An officer can’t be transferred from his own corps to another,” he said.