Evidently--!
Lamuse saw nothing, blinded and borne down as he was by the load he
had taken from Farfadet and me, occupied in the poise of them, and
in finding where his laden and leaden feet might tread.
But he looks unhappy; he groans. A weighty and mournful obsession is
stifling him. In his harsh breathing it seems to me that I can hear
his heart beating and muttering. Looking at Volpatte, hooded in
bandages, and then at the strong man, muscular and full-blooded,
with that profound and eternal yearning whose sharpness he alone can
gauge, I say to myself that the worst wounded man is not he whom we
think.
We go down at last to the village. "Let's have a drink," says
Fouillade. "I'm going to be sent back," says Volpatte. Lamuse puffs
and groans.
Our comrades shout and come running, and we gather in the little
square where the church stands with its twin towers--so thoroughly
mutilated by a shell that one can no longer look it in the face.
5
Sanctuary
THE dim road which rises through the middle of the night-bound wood
is so strangely full of obstructing shadows that the deep darkness
of the forest itself might by some magic have overflowed upon it. It
is the regiment on the march, in quest of a new home.
The weighty ranks of the shadows, burdened both high and broad,
hustle each other blindly. Each wave, pushed by the following,
stumbles upon the one in front, while alongside and detached are the
evolutions of those less bulky ghosts, the N.
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