The man makes a vague gesture. The rest of the fatigue has not followed, will never get here. Still, the rations it was bringing must be looked for. Where will they be found? Far from here? Another gesture of weariness, of indifference, of ignorance--one cannot guess which. “Well, do explain yourself!” The soldier lays down his load and stands up straight. “I’ll go back,” is all he says. And he crosses the threshold again, followed by two men whom the sergeant has told off. The commandant of the fort made me visit his domain, the casemates of Bourges, the observing stations, of which one is still fit for use, the cupola deprived of its 75-mm. gun. We run across the commander of the 3rd Battalion of Light Infantry, who holds the sector in front of the fort up to the village, and the battalion chaplain, the Abbé C----, who, under his helmet, with his weather-beaten features and his long beard, looks like a crusader rather than a monk. The latter comes from the neighbouring redoubt, a little earthwork where he had set up a dressing station, which he has had to remove. “Yesterday,” he told me, “our riflemen brought in a prisoner, groaning loudly and constantly repeating in a piteous tone, ‘Vier Kinder! Vier Kinder!’ (Four children!)” For the benefit of those who knew no German, he made gestures illustrating a row of figures of different heights and counted up to four on his fingers. Our men put him in a corner of the redoubt, which is very narrow, while they themselves, for want of room, remained in the doorway, exposed to the bursting shells. The commandant, as he passed by, ordered them to abandon this Quixotic arrangement. Stroking his beard, he adds philosophically: “After all, whatever comes here comes from the prisoner’s lines. It is only fair that he should be able to appreciate its quality.” The commandant of the fort leads me out on to the parapets, which are continually being demolished and continually repaired. “Be careful; in order to get there we have to cross as quickly as possible a zone which is under fire from an enemy machine-gun!” More treacherous than the whistling of shells, the bullets pass above our heads, but he himself does not hurry in the least. Here are posted, in the hollowed-out earth, finding places as best they can, the look-out men, and in shelters very little safer, our machine-guns. Dawn begins to appear, eclipsing the light of the moon. Half lying on the parapet, I see a glorious spring sunrise. It awakens the plains of the Woevre, lighting up the rivulets and pools. Here is Vaux village on the right, and Damloup village on the left. Farther on, that large cluster of ruined houses must be Étain. In the rising sun they form a white lace*-work of stone, recalling the cities of the East. And yonder are the frowning hillsides of Hardaumont. Douaumont towers above, Douaumont still swathed in darkness, like an evil spirit.