He closed his eyes in prayer, and I could no longer see him, for the tears in my own. To comfort him, I placed my hand on his breast. He winced. "Forgive me, father, I've had a bullet through there, too." Not only had he a shattered leg, but a bullet had gone through his breast, and another had gone just above his heart. His shirt was red with blood which had oozed through the dressings. Somehow it did not occur to me to think of his great suffering. He seemed more like a martyr broken on the wheel, with a halo round his head. This young boy, who knew how to suffer so well, must have fought magnificently. And I thought as I raised my hand to bless him: "How fine he is!" Four medals hung round his neck, and he held them out for me to kiss them. They tasted of blood, and I still have the strange taste on my lips of those medals which had lain over the wound, which bled above his heart. "That one, the biggest, was given me by a priest down there in the ambulance, which was an old farm once, and whose walls are riddled with shells. What a night it was! and what an amount of blood there was about!" My young Marseillais writhed, not with the pain from his wounds, but with the fearful remembrance of that night. The horror of that superhuman agony took possession of his mind. I wanted him to sleep, but words poured from his lips, in his fever. It was useless to try to stop him, so I let him tell me his sad tale. "We had been fighting all day long, and felt death stalking beside us all day too. It was like a frightful tempest, like hell let loose. Bullets fell round us like hail, and I saw my comrades fall at my side cut in half or blown into bits by shell fire. They uttered no cries, they were wiped out instantaneously. But the others ... those who were still alive.... I can tell you it was enough to make your blood run cold. It was enough to make one go raving mad." He stopped to drink a little. I thought he was exhausted with the effort of recalling the awful scene. "Try to rest now, my child. You shall tell me the rest to-morrow." But he would not listen to me. Up to now, it was the man who had been speaking, now suddenly the soldier awoke, the lover of his country, the French trooper fascinated by the glory of it all. "It was so sad, yet so fine. War may kill you, but it makes you drunk; in spite of everything one had to laugh. I don't know what makes one laugh at such times.... Something great and splendid passes before one's eyes.... There is danger, but there is excitement, and it's that which attracts us.... The captain was standing, we were lying down. From time to time he would say: 'It's all right, boys.... We're making a fine mess of the Huns! Can you hear the 75's singing?'