The water
penetrates to the deep joy with which dinner endowed us, and puts it
out. Space itself shrinks; and the sky, which is a field of
melancholy, comes closely down upon the earth, which is a field of
death.
We are still there, implanted and idle. It will be hard to-day to
reach the end of it, to get rid of the afternoon. We shiver in
discomfort, and keep shifting our positions, like cattle enclosed.
Cocon is explaining to his neighbor the arrangement and intricacy of
our trenches. He has seen a military map and made some calculations.
In the sector occupied by our regiment there are fifteen lines of
French trenches. Some are abandoned, invaded by grass, and half
leveled; the others solidly upkept and bristling with men. These
parallels are joined up by innumerable galleries which hook and
crook themselves like ancient streets. The system is much more dense
than we believe who live inside it. On the twenty-five kilometers'
width that form the army front, one must count on a thousand
kilometers of hollowed lines--trenches and saps of all sorts. And
the French Army consists of ten such armies. There are then, on the
French side, about 10,000 kilometers [note 2] of trenches, and as
much again on the German side. And the French front is only about
one-eighth of the whole war-front of the world.
Thus speaks Cocon, and he ends by saying to his neighbor, "In all
that lot, you see what we are, us chaps?"
Poor Barque's head droops.
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