"I have always thought all those things," I murmured.
"Ah!" said Bertrand. We looked at each other without a word, with a
little surprised self-communion. After this full silence he spoke
again. "It's time to start duty; take your rifle and come."
* * * * * *
From our listening-post we see towards the east a light spreading
like a conflagration, but bluer and sadder than buildings on fire.
It streaks the sky above a long black cloud which extends suspended
like the smoke of an extinguished fire, like an immense stain on the
world. It is the returning morning.
It is so cold that we cannot stand still in spite of our fettering
fatigue. We tremble and shiver and shed tears, and our teeth
chatter. Little by little, with dispiriting tardiness, day escapes
from the sky into the slender framework of the black clouds. All is
frozen, colorless and empty; a deathly silence reigns everywhere.
There is rime and snow under a burden of mist. Everything is white.
Paradis moves--a heavy pallid ghost, for we two also are all white.
I had placed my shoulder-bag on the other side of the parapet, and
it looks as if wrapped in paper. In the bottom of the hole a little
snow floats, fretted and gray in the black foot-bath. Outside the
hole, on the piled-up things, in the excavations, upon the crowded
dead, snow rests like muslin.
Two stooping protuberant masses are crayoned on the mist; they grow
darker as they approach and hail us.
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