through and through, and a void in the place of his heart.  Another specter, quite near, had doubtless long since disintegrated, while held up by his clothes.  At the time when the shadow of night began to seize us in its greatness a wind arose, a wind which shook the desiccated creature, and he emptied himself of a mass of mold and dust.  One saw the sky’s whirlwind, dark and disheveled, in the place where the man had been; the soldier was carried away by the wind and buried in the sky.

Towards the end of the afternoon the piercing whistle of the bullets was redoubled.  We were riddled and battered by the noise.  The wariness with which we watched the landscape that was watching us seemed to exasperate Marcassin.  He pondered an idea; then came to a sudden decision and cried triumphantly, “Look!”

He climbed to the parapet, stood there upright, shook his fist at space with the blind and simple gesture of the apostle who is offering his example and his heart, and shouted, “Death to the Boches!”

Then he came down, quivering with the faith of his self-gift.

“Better not do that again,” growled the soldiers who were lined up in the trench, gorgonized by the extraordinary sight of a living man standing, for no reason, on a front line parapet in broad daylight, stupefied by the rashness they admired although it outstripped them.

“Why not?  Look!”

Marcassin sprang up once more.  Lean and erect, he stood like a poplar, and raising both arms straight into the air, he yelled, “I believe only in the glory of France!”

Nothing else was left for him; he was but a conviction.  Hardly had he spoken thus in the teeth of the invisible hurricane when he opened his arms, assumed the shape of a cross against the sky, spun round, and fell noisily into the middle of the trench and of our cries.

He had rolled onto his belly.  We gathered round him.  With a jerk he turned on to his back, his arms slackened, and his gaze drowned in his eyes.  His blood began to spread around him, and we drew our great boots away, that we should not walk on that blood.

“He died like an idiot,” said Margat in a choking voice; “but by God it’s fine!”

He took off his cap, saluted awkwardly and stood with bowed head.

“Committing suicide for an idea, it’s fine,” mumbled Vidaine.

“It’s fine, it’s fine!” other voices said.

And these little words fluttered down like leaves and petals onto the body of the great dead soldier.

“Where’s his cap, that he thought so much of?” groaned his orderly, Aubeau, looking in all directions.

“Up there, to be sure:  I’ll fetch it,” said Termite.

The comical man went for the relic.  He mounted the parapet in his turn, coolly, but bending low.  We saw him ferreting about, frail as a poor monkey on the terrible crest.  At last he put his hand on the cap and jumped into the trench.  A smile sparkled in his eyes and in the middle of his beard, and his brass “cold meat ticket” jingled on his shaggy wrist.