How much joy I got out of my disinterested efforts! Not only that of useful labour accomplished. The incessant contact, our conversations, the services rendered mutually, made me fonder of each of my companions every day. I was getting into touch with the people again. I no longer considered, as I used to, that it would satisfy me to live in the bosom of a restricted caste of beings brought up in the same way as I had been. I suddenly once more became aware of the ascendency of certain doctrines. Social morality had always seemed to be a poor morality for those on the right side of the barrier, as I was. Now I realised my mistake. There should be neither oppressors nor oppressed, neither dominators nor dominated,--alliance and not confusion of the different social classes. "Each for all and all for each," as the old saying is. Were we not all co-operating with the same heart in the same work? If between these soldiers and me there was a dissimilarity in education and disposition, if I, at their head, was exempt from the most thankless fatigues, did that prevent reciprocal collaboration and esteem, or stop any one being satisfied with their fate? No, no. Prunelle agreed; the chief thing was that each class should know the other, then it would not be long before they appreciated each other, and recognised each other as brothers, and not such very different brothers either! This idea, in particular, clung to me. Disparities due to education and upbringing, to the style of life, are, to a certain extent, exterior. How little they count for in comparison with the tongue, the customs, and disposition which are shared in common by the sons of one nation and which draw them together. Between the people and the aristocracy the difference is simply that which exists between youth and ripe middle age. The people are like a young and lusty lad, who only asks to be allowed to grow! What were the common sense of an Icard, the animation of a Judsi, the self-denial of a Bouillon, if not the deep-rooted qualities of our soil and race? There is enjoyment in breathing them, when one also exhales them! CHAPTER VIII A TEMPTATION How tired we were that evening. Really absolutely done. We had been marching for twenty-four hours, almost without a halt. We were wandering in the middle of Argonne in that part of the Chalade, and the Four de Paris which were to be mentioned so often in the _communiqués_ later on. The worst of it was that we had nothing to eat, except the remains of some bread crumbling at the bottom of our haversacks. We regretted having wasted the biscuits with which we had been so liberally provided two days before.