His neighbor, whose greatcoat is torn and his head bare,
looks at him and says to him--"What's the use of worrying?"
And he repeats the sentence several times at random, gazing straight
in front of him, his hands on his knees. A young man in the middle
of the seat is talking to himself. He says that he is an aviator.
There are burns down one side of his body and on his face. In his
fever he is still burning; it seems to him that he is still gnawed
by the pointed flames that leaped from his engine. He is muttering,
"Gott mit uns!" and then, "God is with us!"
A zouave with his arm in a sling, who sits awry and seems to carry
his shoulder like a torturing burden, speaks to him: "You're the
aviator that fell, aren't you?"
"I've seen--things," replies the flying-man laboriously.
"I too, I've seen some!" the soldier interrupts; "some people
couldn't stick it, to see what I've seen."
"Come and sit here," says one of the men on the seat to me, making
room as he speaks. "Are you wounded?"
"No; I brought a wounded man here, and I'm going back."
"You're worse than wounded then; come and sit down."
"I was mayor in my place," explains one of the sufferers, "but when
I go back no one will know me again, it's so long now that I've been
in misery."
"Four hours now have I been stuck on this bench," groans a sort of
mendicant, whose shaking hand holds his helmet on his knees like an
alms-bowl, whose head is lowered and his back rounded.
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