The transfusion is made. The staff of the hospital, touched by the devotion of this wounded soldier, who was known to be very poor, made a little collection here and there, very quietly, and gathered five hundred francs, which they took great satisfaction in offering to him. One day one of them came close to his bed, spoke of the service he had rendered, thanked him and offered him the money. Mark his answer: "Oh, no! I give my blood; I do not sell it!" A very young soldier from the North, with a beardless and rather childish face, is stretched at the back of a trench, dying from a terrible shell wound in the stomach. In spite of the frightful wound he does not complain, he does not repine, and in his wide, upward-gazing eyes one could just perceive the expression of sadness which he often had. For since mobilizing he had received no news from his home in the occupied territory. His comrades are doing what they can for him, offering him water to drink, unbuttoning his tunic, trying to stanch the blood. Opening his eyes, which he had kept for a long moment closed, and no longer with an expression of suffering, he said to one of his comrades, a big, hairy fellow who was bending over him: "Friend, you must not tell mother what a frightful wound I had! A bullet is better than what I have!" Then he distributed a few little things he had in his pocket--his knife, his purse, a corkscrew, a tinder-box--a last testament soon ended. Finally, with difficulty, he opened his notebook and, setting himself to write, though he could no longer see very clearly, he traced a few lines. When he had finished his soul departed.... Three minutes later, as the word of his end spread along the trench, at this time not under heavy bombardment by the enemy, a Captain arrived, smeared with mud up to the shoulders. He saw the soldier. "Oh, poor boy! One of my bravest!" Respectfully he took the notebook, which had fallen on the ground, opened it and read: "Au revoir, father; au revoir, mother; au revoir, little sisters; I am dying for my country. Vive la France!" Sergeant Raissac of Beziers was mortally wounded in an assault on a German trench. When they lifted his body his hand still held a photograph representing his mother, his sisters and himself, and on the back of the picture he had managed to write, with his last effort, "Adieu! No tears, but a Christian acceptance. I am at peace with God." Yesterday, during his two days' leave, I met the son of a poor countrywoman, a workman whom I have loved for a long time. When I took leave of him, saying, "Good luck to you, Marcel!" he looked up with unreproaching eyes and answered me: "On the one side, and on the other, I fear nothing!" And this meant: "Life? Death? What does it matter? I am ready!" What does all this signify? It is the poetry of chivalry that continues; it is the unfinished Crusade; it is God making Himself manifest through purified France. Those who seek the sublime will find nothing grander.