It is that everywhere. What are we, we
chaps, and what's all this here? Nothing at all. All we can see is
only a speck. You've got to remember that this morning there's three
thousand kilometers of equal evils, or nearly equal, or worse."
"And then," said the comrade at our side, whom we could not
recognize even by his voice, "to-morrow it begins again. It began
again the day before yesterday, and all the days before that!"
With an effort as if he was tearing the ground, the chasseur dragged
his body out of the earth where he had molded a depression like an
oozing coffin, and sat in the hole. He blinked his eyes and tried to
shake the balance of mud from his face, and said, "We shall come out
of it again this time. And who knows, p'raps we shall come out of it
again to-morrow! Who knows?"
Paradis, with his back bent under mats of earth and clay, was trying
to convey his idea that the war cannot be imagined or measured in
terms of time and space. "When one speaks of the whole war," he
said, thinking aloud, "it's as if you said nothing at all--the words
are strangled. We're here, and we look at it all like blind men."
A bass voice rolled to us from a little farther away, "No, one
cannot imagine it."
At these words a burst of harsh laughter tore itself from some one.
"How could you imagine it, to begin with, if you hadn't been there?"
"You'd have to be mad," said the chasseur.
Paradis leaned over a sprawling outspread mass beside him and said,
"Are you asleep?"
"No, but I'm not going to budge.
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