One is dressed in a sky-blue uniform, like the rank and file, like every one. His tanned face, every expression of which I know well--it combines great kindliness with an intellect always in search of certainty and precision--betrays the secret that racks him. He is in command of the most exposed, the most frequently attacked, the most difficult sector of the whole front of the army which covers Verdun, and, at this moment, of the entire front of the French Army. It touches Fort Douaumont and guards Fort Vaux. He lives heart and soul with his men, who are down there in the whirlwind of steel, holding out against all odds. He shares the burden of their hardships and their exertions. He is consumed with anxiety to know. The desire to conquer is fretting his body. His features bear ample witness to the fire that burns within. The other, tall and massively built, wears the old-fashioned uniform, to whose colours the eye is unaccustomed: red trousers, black tunic, red cap, with a double band of oak leaves.[1] He seems to be gazing at an invisible point above the head of the person whom he is addressing. While listening, he seems to be under the spell of some inner dream. He wears a thick white moustache. His eyes have a far-away look. Are the realities of the present enough for them, or do they need a map of the world to satisfy them? [1] In the French Army a double band of oak leaves round the cap denotes a General commanding a division.--_Translator’s Note._ The two have stopped near our group. The senior General says to his companion, as if putting an end to their conversation--a conversation in which up to now he has scarcely uttered a word: “All is well, and now you need feel no uneasiness.” The other seems to be surprised. He is in a state of deadly anxiety, and he is urged to be calm! He is apparently waiting for something more, but this is really the end of the discussion. A motor-car has been summoned. He salutes and goes off. “You need feel no uneasiness.” One of my comrades, who in his brief leisure moments is rereading Tolstoi’s _War and Peace_, and is blessed with a portentous memory, reminds me of the passage where Prince André Bolkonsky, aide-de-camp to General Bagration, comes to report to his chief what he has been able to find out about the forces that are threatening the Russian Army: “While listening to him, Prince Bagration stared in front of him, and Prince André, while studying the strongly marked features of that face whose eyes were half-closed, wandering, and sleepy, asked himself, with an uneasy curiosity, what thoughts, what feelings were hidden behind that impenetrable mask?” (The eyes, here, are also staring, but at some point far away, as if to see beyond the horizon of Verdun.) “All is well,” says Bagration simply, as if what he has just heard had been anticipated by him. And what he has just heard is the menace that weighs upon his army.