The priest leaned forward, his hands stretched out around the soldier.  “But you are a hero,” he cried.  “Let me embrace you!”

The soldier drew back, shaking his head sadly.  “No,” he said, his voice breaking—­“no, my father, you must not embrace me now.  I may have been a brave man once.  But now I am a coward.  Let me tell you everything.  My wounds were bad, but not desperate.  The brancardiers carried me down to Verdun, at night, I suppose, but I was unconscious; and so to the hospital at Vaudelaincourt.  There were days and nights of blankness mixed with pain.  Then I came to my senses and had rest.  It was wonderful.  I thought that I had died and gone to heaven.  Would God it had been so!  Then I should have been with my lieutenant.  They told me he had passed away in the redoubt.  But that hospital was beautiful, so clean and quiet and friendly.  Those white nurses were angels.  They handled me like a baby.  I would have liked to stay there.  I had no desire to get better.  But I did.  One day several officers visited the hospital.  They came to my cot, where I was sitting up.  The highest of them brought out a Cross of War and pinned it on the breast of my nightshirt.  ‘There,’ he said, ’you are decorated, Pierre Duval!  You are one of the heroes of France.  You are soon going to be perfectly well and to fight again bravely for your country.’  I thanked him, but I knew better.  My body might get perfectly well, but something in my soul was broken.  It was worn out.  The thin spring had snapped.  I could never fight again.  Any loud noise made me shake all over.  I knew that I could never face a battle—­impossible!  I should certainly lose my nerve and run away.  It is a damned feeling, that broken something inside of one.  I can’t describe it.”

Pierre stopped for a moment and moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue.

“I know,” said Father Courcy.  “I understand perfectly what you want to say.  It was like being lost and thinking that nothing could save you; a feeling that is piercing and dull at the same time, like a heavy weight pressing on you with sharp stabs in it.  It was what they call shellshock, a terrible thing.  Sometimes it drives men crazy for a while.  But the doctors know what to do for that malady.  It passes.  You got over it.”

“No,” answered Pierre, “the doctors may not have known that I had it.  At all events, they did not know what to do for it.  It did not pass.  It grew worse.  But I hid it, talking very little, never telling anybody how I felt.  They said I was depressed and needed cheering up.  All the while there was that black snake coiled around my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter.  But my body grew stronger every day.  The wounds were all healed.  I was walking around.  In July the doctor-in-chief sent for me to his office.  He said:  ’You are cured, Pierre Duval, but you are not yet fit to fight.  You are low in your mind.  You need cheering up.  You are