With my heart beating fast I entered the room to which I had been assigned. There they all were before me, these lads that had undergone that terrible and fierce adventuring into war. I remember how they went away in our wonderful mobilisation trains, those makeshift, flower-bedecked trains that sped all of them to the same destination, the same region of glory and bloodshed. One long war cry seemed to rise up from them over all our land. Our young soldiers who went away in them had acquired an entirely new way of shouting "_Vive la France_." It was no longer as if they were on parade, notwithstanding all the flowers that people tossed to them: it was already the cry of men who were to lead in war's assaults, and make the supreme sacrifice of their lives. I remember one little infantryman of twenty years, standing erect with folded arms in the back of his compartment, his eyes flashing, and all the muscles of his pale face taut. He kept repeating threateningly, "_Vive la France--vive la France_," without a look toward any one; saying it just to himself and for his country. And I felt that it was as if he said: "We shall get them: we must get them, no matter what it costs. As for me, well, you see, to begin with, my life doesn't count any more." This very fellow is the one, perhaps, who has come back now and sleeps here in this first cot, where a face both energetic and infantile shows in the midst of the blood-stained linen. Sister Gabrielle made a tour with me of all the patients. The memory of certain of them particularly is fixed in my mind. There is number 3, here, who got a bullet wound in the region of the liver, and has to lie absolutely still, lest an internal hemorrhage may occur at any moment. A warrior of twenty-three he is, with cheeks as rosy as a girl's, and clear blue eyes. He fought like a lion, they say, but here nothing could be gentler. His appreciation for the least thing that is done for him is touching. Number 8, little eight, as they call him, a volunteer, who seems about fifteen, and who has to live week after week propped on his right side, on a hard hospital bed, on account of an abscess following his wound. Number 12, an infantryman, who got a bullet in the left temple; it was extracted from his right maxillary, and in passing cut his tongue in two. "Everything has been put back," said the Sister, "but he can't talk yet, and he'll have to learn to talk all over again, like a little child. In taking care of him you must come every once in a while and see if you can guess what he wants." Number 17, a brave among the braves, who, under the enemy's fire, crawled ten kilometres on his hands and knees, dragging his twice-wounded foot behind him, to deliver an order that he had been charged with. His wounds cause him cruel suffering, and yet he seems illuminated as with some strange inward joy. Number 24, nicknamed the little sieve, because of his fifteen wounds. Number 32, who suffers like a real martyr. His leg was