“Always ready to sacrifice himself; a brave among the
     brave.”

These are modest and yet glorious details:  modest because they are so very common, because they are constantly being repeated in their noble monotony and springing up from every side, numberless as the essential actions of our daily life; and glorious because before this war they seemed so rare and almost legendary and incomprehensible.

3

Raymond Bon was a child of the south, of that Provence which, day after day, is shedding torrents of its blood to wipe out slanders which we can no longer remember without turning pale with anger and indignation.  He was born at Avignon, the old city of the Popes and the cicadas, where men have louder accents and lighter hearts than elsewhere.  He was a little boxing-master, who earned a livelihood at Nice for himself and his destitute parents by giving lessons in the noble art of self-defence with the good, ever-ready weapons which nature has bestowed upon us.  He boasted no other education than that which a lad picks up at the primary school; but, almost illiterate as he was, he possessed all the refinement, the innate culture, the unconscious delicacy and tact, the kindliness of speech and feeling and the beautiful heart of that comely race whose foremost sons seem to be purified and spiritualized from their first childish steps by the most radiant sunshine in the world.  One would say that they were directly related to those exquisite ephebes of ancient Greece who sprang into existence ready to understand all things and to experience life’s purest emotions before they themselves had lived.  My reason for insisting upon the point is that, in this respect above all, he represented thousands and thousands of young men from that wonderful region where all the best and most lovable qualities of mankind lie hidden all around beneath the indifferent surface of everyday existence, only awaiting a favourable occasion to blossom into astonishing flowers of grace and generosity and heroism.

4

When I heard that he had gone to the front, I felt a melancholy certainty that I should never set eyes on him again.  He was of those whose fate there is no mistaking.  He was one of those predestined heroes whose courage marks them out beforehand for death and laurels.  I but too well knew his eagerness, his unbounded sincerity and single-mindedness and his great heart:  that admirable heart devoid of all caution or ulterior motive or calculation, that heart turned, at all times and with all its might, purely towards honour and duty.  He was bound to be in the trenches and in the bayonet-charge the same man that I had so often seen in the ring, taking risks from the start, taking them wholesale, unremittingly, blindly and cheerfully and always ready with his pleasant smile, like that of a shy child, at any time to face whatever giant might have challenged him.