during rain. It was here that the surgeon had established a sort of improvised field hospital recognizable by a Red Cross flag put up in a crack in the wall and adorning it.
In front of the house a crowd was waiting. A long line of human beings, wan and worn out, some standing with fixed looks, others sitting on the ground, sad with stooped and pointed shoulders, their heads buried in their hands. Death had already laid its terrible hand upon these emaciated countenances, these scraggy frames, these members which hung loose, devoid of blood and marrow. And confronted with this heartbreaking sight, I forgot my own suffering, and my heart was touched with pity. Three months were sufficient to break down these robust bodies, inured to labor and fatigue! . . . Three months! And these young men who loved life, these children of the soil who grew up as dreamers in the freedom of the fields, trusting in the goodness of nature, these youths were done for! . . . To the marine who dies is given the sea as a burying place; he descends into eternal darkness to the rhythm of its murmuring waves. But these! . . . A few more days of grace perhaps, and then these tatterdemallions will suddenly tumble down into the mud of a ditch, their corpses delivered up to the fangs of prowling dogs and to the beaks of nightbirds.
I was swept by a feeling of such brotherly and sorrowful pity for them that I wished I could press all these unhappy men to my breast, in a single embrace, and I wished, oh, how ardently I wished it!—I had a hundred female breasts, like Isis, swollen with milk, that I might offer to all these bloodless lips. . . They were entering the house one by one and were leaving it as quickly, pursued by growling and swearing sounds. For the rest, the surgeon did not bother with them at
