One of
the services--whichever you like--was a reflection of the other, and
I wondered if I was seeing double. I went down lower; they didn't
fire at me. Why? I don't know at all. Then I could hear. I heard one
murmur. one only. I could only gather a single prayer that came up
to me en bloc, the sound of a single chant that passed by me on its
way to heaven. I went to and fro in space to listen to this faint
mixture of hymns that blended together just the same although they
were one against the other; and the more they tried to get on top of
each other, the more they were blended together up in the heights of
the sky where I was floating.
"I got some shrapnel just at the moment when, very low down, I made
out the two voices from the earth that made up the one--'Gott mit
uns!' and 'God is with us!'--and I flew away."
The young man shook his bandage-covered head; he seemed deranged by
the recollection. "I said to myself at the moment, 'I must be mad!'"
"It's the truth of things that's mad," said the zouave.
With his eyes shining in delirium, the narrator sought to express
and convey the deep disturbing idea that was besieging him, that he
was struggling against.
"Now think of it!" he said. "Fancy those two identical crowds
yelling things that are identical and yet opposite, these identical
enemy cries! What must the good God think about it all? I know well
enough that He knows everything, but even if He knows everything, He
won't know what to make of it.
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