At last it is his own country, his own town, his own station ... and the train is stopping! Yes, the family are all there, running to meet him. The man leaves the carriage; he falls into their arms; he leans on their shoulders. Tears are on his cheeks; his mind is benumbed, he can only look. There is father, there is mother, there is wife and child. “Well, well! How are you?” “Ah, yes, all right,”--somewhat abstractedly. He pulls himself together, recovers his strength and composure. He stands erect, proudly. He is bruised, stained, and dirty; a dreadful object, at once repulsive and sublime. He is in the midst of his doting, distracted family, who forget all the questions they had planned to ask about himself and the war, and can only ask: “Are you hungry? are you thirsty? are you warm?” He does not know if he is or not. He feels no need of anything. He goes with them. He recognizes the land, the road, the trees, and the houses. He breathes deeply. What delicious air! He is hurried along. As he passes the neighbors exclaim: “There he is!” He is safe and whole, he is brave and noble. He wears on his breast the Croix de Guerre. He is petted. He is washed and cleaned and mended and taken out for a promenade. He tries to tell his story, but he tells it badly: he has not the words for it. He knows not how to express all the misery endured, the bodily suffering, the horror of the battle. He tells little fragments of stories, and already he is forgetting the most terrible features. The struggle which was beyond all comprehension seems small when he tries to recount it. It becomes nothing more than a local fight with grenades, a patch of ground occupied in the night, a brook crossed--a thing of shadow and of mystery. It is no longer grandiose. It really was a catastrophe: it becomes a mere fist fight. However, they listen, they ask questions. He must repeat and go into detail. And he, who has escaped the jaws of death, who by a miracle has come out of the destruction, who feels with strangeness the new pulses of life, he runs about to see his friends, he shakes the burden from his thought, he amuses himself--and finally is aware that the time has passed like a flash of lightning and he must again depart. Then the anguish again lays hold upon him; for that which he could not tell clearly he knows only too well. No fibre of his being has forgotten it. His flesh creeps at the thought of entering again the bath of blood, of noise, of war; the long vigils in the trench, the whistle of the shells, the infantry attack. He goes to join his regiment. He is loaded with delicacies, tobacco, and presents. He has new socks on his feet and a new sweater on his back. He is made over, he is a man again. He is sad, but he goes: there is no other way.