I went out, and wandered about round the farm for a long time. I was moved by a profound pity. I could not shake off the thought of this poor unfortunate. To have nothing left to learn about his illness, at his age, which was my age, to go in terror of death, to feel oneself being drawn towards it!... Then I was moved to pity for myself, for us all. Were we not all under the shadow of death, faced with tragic ends? Alas! When life was sweet and smiled on us with her store of fresh beauties.... CHAPTER XVIII DARK HOURS I had persuaded De Valpic to report sick. Then destiny stepped in. We started again that same night on the stroke of two o'clock. And when I went up to him during the first halt he begged me to strike his name off the list. He felt much better. He so much wanted to see the continuation, to be in at the big victory. Guillaumin, who appeared just then, asked if we were far from the frontier. De Valpic enlightened him. Rather not! And judging by the direction we were taking we should soon be in that part of Lorraine which had been annexed. Good! It would have been maddening to go a long way round. We reached Étain, where we had a warm welcome, as the Bosches had not returned in spite of their boasting. We only went straight through the town. It was a long stage, but we did not get over-tired in this mild weather. Milestone succeeded milestone. Metz: 43 km. 41, 40, 38.... Guillaumin was exultant: "A mere constitutional, what?" And Judsi: "We'll be sleepin' in their bloomin' country, to-morrow." Some of the men may have believed it. I thought it only right to moderate the enthusiasm. "Oh Metz! We haven't got there yet. The siege is sure to be ghastly!" The lieutenant who was passing, chaffed me: "Dreher, as pessimistic as usual? He'll never believe we're getting on, until he's in Berlin." We went into quarters at Buxy. Shortly after midnight there was an alarm. The artillery which we had not heard for some days was talking again. As old stagers we had missed the noise, it cheered us up. But we grumbled when, having been called up and paraded in the Church Square, we were kept hanging about and freezing for an hour or more. The men "groused," and wanted to know why they couldn't be left to sleep in peace. A lot of them wanted to "get down to it" again, and we had hard work to prevent them. A certain number sloped off in the dark. Each platoon lost a few who never turned up again. Suddenly there was an uproar and crush at the other end of the Square. We had to spread ourselves to keep order. Playoust went to see what was up, leaving his half-section to take care of itself, with the natural consequence that it disbanded. He came back, raising his hands, with awful tales of the whole populace fleeing before the invaders! There was nothing to be done! This time the Bosches were coming in dense masses, ravaging and setting fire to everything!