“Yes, there’s wounded here and there’s dead there!” he says; “all those who hadn’t got a privilential situation!  Ah, la, la!  The poor devils, when you think of it, eh, what they must have suffered!  And at this moment, all the time, there’s some dying.  And we stand it very well, an’ hardly think of it.  They didn’t need to kill so many, that’s certain—­there’s been faults and blunders, as everybody knows of.  But fortunately,” he adds, with animation, putting on my shoulder the hand that is big as a young animal, “the soldiers’ deaths and the chief’s blunders, that’ll all disappear one fine day, melted away and forgotten in the glory of the victorious Commander!”

* * * * * *

There has been much talk in our quarter of a Memorial Festival.

I am not anxious to be present and I watch Marie set off.  Then I feel myself impelled to go there, as if it were a duty.

I cross the bridge.  I stop at the corner of the Old Road, on the edge of the fields.  Two steps away there is the cemetery, which is hardly growing, since nearly all those who die now are not anywhere.

I lift my eyes and take in the whole spectacle together.  The hill which rises in front of me is full of people.  It trembles like a swarm of bees.  Up above, on the avenue of trimmed limetrees, it is crowned by the sunshine and by the red platform, which scintillates with the richness of dresses and uniforms and musical instruments.

Then there is a red barrier.  On this side of that barrier, lower down, the public swarms and rustles.

I recognize the great picture of the past.  I remember this ceremony, spacious as a season, which has been regularly staged here so many times in the course of my childhood and youth, and with almost the same rites and forms.  It was like this last year, and the other years, and a century ago and centuries since.

Near me an old peasant in sabots is planted.  Rags, shapeless and colorless—­the color of time—­cover the eternal man of the fields.  He is what he always was.  He blinks, leaning on a stick; he holds his cap in his hand because what he sees is so like a church service.  His legs are trembling; he wonders if he ought to be kneeling.

And I, I feel myself diminished, cut back, returned through the cycles of time to the little that I am.

* * * * * *

Up there, borne by the flag-draped rostrum, a man is speaking.  He lifts a sculptural head aloft, whose hair is white as marble.

At my distance I can hardly hear him.  But the wind carries me some phrases, louder shouted, of his peroration.  He is preaching resignation to the people, and the continuance of things.  He implores them to abandon finally the accursed war of classes, to devote themselves forever to the blessed war of races in all its shapes.  After the war there must be no more social utopias, but discipline instead, whose grandeur and beauty the war has happily revealed, the union of rich and poor for national expansion and the victory of France in the world, and sacred hatred of the Germans, which is a virtue in the French.  Let us remember!