The cold blast benumbed us, while we dragged ourselves through the softened plains which evening was darkening.  At one halt I saw one of those men who used to agitate at the depot to be sent to the front.  He had sunk down at the foot of the stacked rifles; exertion had made him almost unrecognizable, and he told me that he had had enough of war!  And little Melusson, whom I once used to see at Viviers, lifted to me his yellowish face, sweat-soaked, where the folds of the eyelids seemed drawn with red crayon, and informed me that he should report sick the next day.

After four marches of despairing length under a lightless sky over a colorless earth, we stood for two hours, hot and damp, at the chilly top of a hill, where a village was beginning.  An epidemic of gloom overspread us.  Why were we stopped in that way?  No one knew anything.

In the evening we engulfed ourselves in the village.  But they halted us in a street.  The sky had heavily darkened.  The fronts of the houses had taken on a greenish hue and reflected and rooted themselves in the running water of the street.  The market-place curved around in front of us—­a black space with shining tracks, like an old mirror to which the silvering only clings in strips.

At last, night fully come, they bade us march.  They made us go forward and then draw back, with loud words of command, in the tunnels of streets, in alleys and yards.  By lantern light they divided us into squads.  I was assigned to the eleventh, quartered in a village whose still standing parts appeared quite new.  Adjutant Marcassin became my section chief.  I was secretly glad of this; for in the gloomy confusion we stuck closely to those we knew, as dogs do.

The new comrades of the squad—­they lodged in the stable, which was open as a cage—­explained to me that we were a long way from the front, over six miles; that we should have four days’ rest and then go on yonder to occupy the trenches at the glass works.  They said it would be like that, in shifts of four days, to the end of the war, and that, moreover, one had not to worry.

These words comforted the newcomers, adrift here and there in the straw.  Their weariness was alleviated.  They set about writing and card-playing.  That evening I dated my letter to Marie “at the Front,” with a flourish of pride.  I understood that glory consists in doing what others have done, in being able to say, “I, too.”

* * * * * *

Three days went by in this “rest camp.”  I got used to an existence crowded with exercises in which we were living gear-wheels; crowded also with fatigues; already I was forgetting my previous existence.