He moves off and I
follow him.
In passing he picks up his helmet that gapes on the earthen bench.
After a dozen paces he comes close to me and says in a low voice and
with a queer air, without looking at me--as he does when he is
upset--"I know where Mesnil Andre is. Would you like to see
him? Come, then."
So saying, he takes off his police hat, folds and pockets it. and
puts on his helmet. He sets off again and I follow him without a
word.
He leads me fifty yards farther, towards the place where our common
dug-out is, and the footbridge of sandbags under which one always
slides with the impression that the muddy arch will collapse on
one's back. After the footbridge, a hollow appears in the wall of
the trench, with a step made of a hurdle stuck fast in the clay.
Paradis climbs there, and motions to me to follow him on to the
narrow and slippery platform. There was recently a sentry's loophole
here, and it has been destroyed and made again lower down with a
couple of bullet-screens. One is obliged to stoop low lest his head
rise above the contrivance.
Paradis says to me, still in the same low voice, "It's me that fixed
up those two shields, so as to see--for I'd got an idea, and I
wanted to see. Put your eye to this--"
"I don't see anything; the hole's stopped up. What's that lump of
cloth?"
"It's him," says Paradis.
Ah! It was a corpse, a corpse sitting in a hole, and horribly
near--
Having flattened my face against the steel plate and glued my eye to
the hole in the bullet-screen, I saw all of it.
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