It is near
midnight. For six hours now we have marched in the increasing burden
of the mud. This is the time when the Paris theaters are
constellated with electroliers and blossoming with lamps; when they
are filled with luxurious excitement, with the rustle of skirts,
with merrymaking and warmth; when a fragrant and radiant multitude,
chatting, laughing, smiling, applauding, expanding. feels itself
pleasantly affected by the cleverly graduated emotions which the
comedy evokes, and lolls in contented enjoyment of the rich and
splendid pageants of military glorification that crowd the stage of
the music-hall.
"Aren't we there? Nom de Dieu, shan't we ever get there?" The groan
is breathed by the long procession that tosses about in these
crevices of the earth, carrying rifles and shovels and pickaxes
under the eternal torrent. We march and march. We are drunk with
fatigue, and roll to this side and that. Stupefied and soaked, we
strike with our shoulders a substance as sodden as ourselves.
"Halt!"--"Are we there?"--"Ah, yes, we're there!"
For the moment a heavy recoil presses us back and then a murmur runs
along: "We've lost ourselves." The truth dawns on the confusion of
the wandering horde. We have taken the wrong turn at some fork, and
it will be the deuce of a job to find the right way again.
Then, too, a rumor passes from mouth to mouth that a fighting
company on its way to the lines is coming up behind us.
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