All is accomplished, all has terminated there.  It is there, in that circle narrow as a well that the descent into the raging heart of hell was halted, the descent into slow tortures, into unrelenting fatigue, into the flashing tempest.  We came here because they told us to come here.  We have done what they told us to do.  I think of the simplicity of our reply on the Day of Judgment.

The gunfire continues.  Always, always, the shells come, and all those bullets that are miles in length.  Hidden behind the horizons, living men unite with machines and fall furiously on space.  They do not see their shots.  They do not know what they are doing.  “You shall not know; you shall not know.”

But since the cannonade is returning, they will be fighting here again.  All these battles spring from themselves and necessitate each other to infinity!  One single battle is not enough, it is not complete, there is no satisfaction.  Nothing is finished, nothing is ever finished.  Ah, it is only men who die!  No one understands the greatness of things, and I know well that I do not understand all the horror in which I am.

* * * * * *

Here is evening, the time when the firing is lighted up.  The horizons of the dark day, of the dark evening, and of the illuminated night revolve around my remains as round a pivot.

I am like those who are going to sleep, like the children.  I am growing fainter and more soothed; I close my eyes; I dream of my home.

Yonder, no doubt, they are joining forces to make the evenings tolerable.  Marie is there, and some other women, getting dinner ready; the house becomes a savor of cooking.  I hear Marie speaking; standing at first, then seated at the table.  I hear the sound of the table things which she moves on the cloth as she takes her place.  Then, because some one is putting a light to the lamp, having lifted its chimney, Marie gets up to go and close the shutters.  She opens the window.  She leans forward and outspreads her arms; but for a moment she stays immersed in the naked night.  She shivers, and I, too.  Dawning in the darkness, she looks afar, as I am doing.  Our eyes have met.  It is true, for this night is hers as much as mine, the same night, and distance is not anything palpable or real; distance is nothing.  It is true, this great close contact.

Where am I?  Where is Marie?  What is she, even?  I do not know, I do not know.  I do not know where the wound in my flesh is, and how can I know the wound in my heart?

* * * * * *

The clouds are crowning themselves with sheaves of stars.  It is an aviary of fire, a hell of silver and gold.  Planetary cataclysms send immense walls of light falling around me.  Phantasmal palaces of shrieking lightning, with arches of star-shells, appear and vanish amid forests of ghastly gleams.