of
such effort as ours.

Alas! were there a hundred of us he would still have to bear the
heaviest burden alone.

All humanity at this hour is bearing a very cruel burden. Every minute
aggravates its sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its aid?

We made an examination of the wounded man, together with our chief, who
muttered almost inaudibly between his teeth:

"He must be prepared for another sacrifice."

Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely consummated.

But Leglise understood. He no longer weeps. He has the weary and
somewhat bewildered look of the man who is rowing against the storm.
I steal a look at him, and he says at once in a clear, calm, resolute
voice:

"I would much rather die."

I go into the garden. It is a brilliant morning, but I can see nothing,
I want to see nothing. I repeat as I walk to and fro:

"He would much rather die."

And I ask despairingly whether he is not right perhaps.

All the poplars rustle softly. With one voice, the voice of Summer
itself, they say: "No! No! He is not right!"

A little beetle crosses the path before me. I step on it
unintentionally, but it flies away in desperate haste. It too has
answered in its own way: "No, really, your friend is not right."

"Tell him he is wrong," sing the swarm of insects that buzz about the
lime-tree.

And even a loud roar from the guns that travels across the landscape
seems to say gruffly: "He is wrong! He is wrong!"

During the evening the chief came back to see Leglise, who said to him
with the same mournful gravity:

"No, I won't, Monsieur, I would rather die."

We go down into the garden, and the chief says a strange thing to me:

"Try to convince him. I begin at last to feel ashamed of demanding such
a sacrifice from him."

And I too... am I not ashamed?

I consult the warm, star-decked night; I am quite sure now that he is
wrong, but I don't know how to tell him so. What can I offer him in
exchange for the thing I am about to ask him? Where shall I find the
words that induce a man to live? Oh you, all things around me, tell me,
repeat to me that it is sweet to live, even with a body so grievously
mutilated.

This morning I extracted a little projectile from one of his wounds.
He secretly concluded that this would perhaps make the great operation
unnecessary, and it hurt me to see his joy. I could not leave him this
satisfaction.

The struggle began again; this time it was desperate. For we have no