* * * * *

The man who lay on the bed said nothing of what had been passing before his closed eyes.  He turned them tranquilly on the father, whose agonised look seemed to implore him to speak.  And then, with an awkward kindness, he tried to explain that if the boy was down-hearted it was probably because he had just left home, but they had cheered him up as well as they could; they knew how he felt.  He had never known what it was to have a father himself, but when he was a kid he used to think what luck it would be to have one....  “So I thought I might try.  I spoke to him, Sir, like you would yourself,... and he soon quieted down.  He said, all the same, there was one thing we got out of this blooming war; that there were lots of poor devils in the world who don’t know each other, but are all made alike.  Sometimes we call ’em our brothers, in sermons and places like that, but no one takes much stock in it.  If you want to know it’s true, you have to slave together like us—­He kissed me then, Sir.”

Clerambault rose, and bending over the bandaged face, kissed the wounded man’s rough cheek.

“Tell me something that I can do for you,” he said.

“You are very good, Sir, but there’s not much you can do now.  I am so used up.  No legs, and a broken arm.  I’m no good,—­what could I work at?  Besides, it’s not sure yet that I shall pull through.  We’ll have to leave it at that.  If I go out, good-bye.  If not, can’t do anything but wait.  There are plenty of trains.”

As Clerambault admired his patience, he repeated his refrain:  “I’ve got the habit.  There’s no merit in being patient when there’s nothing else to do....  A little more or less, what does it matter?...  It’s like life, this war is.”

Clerambault saw that in his egotism he had asked the man nothing about himself.  He did not even know his name.

“My name?  It’s a good fit for me,—­Courtois Aime is what they call me—­Aime, that’s the Christian name, fine for an unlucky fellow like me, and Courtois on the top of it.  Queer enough, isn’t it?...  I never had a family, came out of an Orphan Asylum; my foster-father, a farmer down in Champagne, offered to bring me up; and you can bet he did it!  I had all the training I wanted; but anyhow it learned me what I had to expect.  I’ve had all that was coming to me!”

Thereupon he told in a few brief dry phrases, without emotion, of the series of bad luck which had made up his life.  Marriage with a girl as poor as himself—­“hunger wedding thirst,” as they say, sickness and death, the struggle with nature,—­it would not be so bad if men would only help.... Homo, homini ... homo....  All the social injustice weighs on the under dog.  As he listened Clerambault could not keep down his indignation, but Aime Courtois took it as a matter of course; that’s the way it always has been, and always will be; some are born to suffer, others