“I was listening to you just now,” he says; “I must tell you that since you came back you have the air of a foreigner—­a Belgian or an American.  You say intolantable things.  We thought at first your mind had got a bit unhinged.  Unfortunately, it’s not that.  Is it because you’ve turned sour?  Anyway, I don’t know what advantage you’re after, but I must cautionize you that you’re anielating everybody.  We must put ourselves in these people’s places.  Apropos of this, and apropos of that, you make proposals of a tendicious character which doesn’t escape them.  You aren’t like the rest any more.  If you go on you’ll look as silly as a giant, and if you’re going to frighten folks, look out for yourself!”

He plants himself before me in massive conviction.  The full daylight reveals more crudely the aging of his features.  His skin is stretched on the bones of his head, and the muscles of his neck and shoulders work badly; they stick, like old drawers.

“And then, after all, what do you want?  We’ve got to carry the war on, eh?  We must give the Boches hell, to sum up.”

With an effort, wearied beforehand, I ask, “And afterwards?”

“What—­afterwards?  Afterwards there’ll be wars, naturally, but civilized wars.  Afterwards?  Why, future posterity!  Own up that you’d like to save the world, eh, what?  When you launch out into these great machinations you say enormities compulsively.  The future?  Ha, ha!”

I turn away from him.  Of what use to try to tell him that the past is dead, that the present is passing, that the future alone is positive!

Through Crillon’s paternal admonishment I feel the threat of the others.  It is not yet hostility around me; but it is already a rupture.  With this truth that clings to me alone, amid the world and its phantoms, am I not indeed rushing into a sort of tragedy impossible to maintain?  They who surround me, filled to the lips, filled to the eyes, with the gross acceptance which turns men into beasts, they look at me mistrustfully, ready to be let loose against me.  Little more was lacking before I should be as much a reprobate as Brisbille, who, in this very place, before the war, stood up alone before the multitude and tried to tell them to their faces that they were going into the gulf.

* * * * * *

I move away with Marie.  We go down into the valley, and then climb Chestnut Hill.  I like these places where I used so often to come in the days when everything around me was a hell which I did not see.  Now that I am a ghost returning from the beyond, this hill still draws me through the streets and lanes.  I remember it and it remembers me.  There is something which we share, which I took away with me yonder, everywhere, like a secret.  I hear that despoiled soldier who said, “Where I come from there are fields and paths and the sea; nowhere else in the world is there that,” and amid my unhappy memories that extraordinary saying shines like news of the truth.