Then the battle goes away, and its departure is heartrending.  In spite of all my efforts, the noise of the firing fades and I am alone; the wind blows and I am naked.

I shall remain nailed to the ground.  By clinging to the earth and plunging my hands into the depth of the swamp as far as the stones, I get my neck round a little to see the enormous burden that my back supports.  No—­it is only the immensity on me.

My gaze goes crawling.  In front of me there are dark things all linked together, which seem to seize or to embrace one another.  I look at those hills which shut out my horizon and imitate gestures and men.  The multitude downfallen there imprisons me in its ruins.  I am walled in by those who are lying down, as I was walled in before by those who stood.

I am not in pain.  I am extraordinarily calm; I am drunk with tranquillity.  Are they dead, all—­those?  I do not know.  The dead are specters of the living, but the living are specters of the dead.  Something warm is licking my hand.  The black mass which overhangs me is trembling.  It is a foundered horse, whose great body is emptying itself, whose blood is flowing like poor touches of a tongue on to my hand.  I shut my eyes, bemused, and think of a bygone merry-making; and I remember that I once saw, at the end of a hunt, against the operatic background of a forest, a child-animal whose life gushed out amid general delight.

A voice is speaking beside me.

No doubt the moon has come out—­I cannot see as high as the cloud escarpments, as high as the sky’s opening.  But that blenching light is making the corpses shine like tombstones.

I try to find the low voice.  There are two bodies, one above the other.  The one underneath must be gigantic—­his arms are thrown backward in a hurricane gesture; his stiff, disheveled hair has crowned him with a broken crown.  His eyes are opaque and glaucous, like two expectorations, and his stillness is greater than anything one may dream of.  On the other the moon’s beams are setting points and lines a-sparkle and silvering gold.  It is he who is talking to me, quietly and without end.  But although his low voice is that of a friend, his words are incoherent.  He is mad—­I am abandoned by him!  No matter, I will drag myself up to him to begin with.  I look at him again.  I shake myself and blink my eyes, so as to look better.  He wears on his body a uniform accursed!  Then with a start, and my hand claw-wise, I stretch myself towards the glittering prize to secure it.  But I cannot go nearer him; it seems that I no longer have a body.  He has looked at me.  He has recognized my uniform, if it is recognizable, and my cap, if I have it still.  Perhaps he has recognized the indelible seal of my race that I carry printed on my features.  Yes, on my face he has recognized that stamp.  Something like hatred has blotted out the face that I saw dawning so close to me.  Our two hearts make a desperate effort to hurl ourselves on each other.  But we can no more strike each other than we can separate ourselves.