with yourselves because you have been generous
to Auger. But there is no merit in being kind to Auger. With a single
story, a single clasp of his hand, he gives you much more than he
received from you. He gives you confidence; he restores your peace of
mind.

Go and see Gregoire who has nothing but his suffering to give, and who
very nearly gave his life.

If you go away without a smile for Gregoire, you may fear that you have
not fulfilled your task. And don't expect him to return your smile, for
where would your liberality be in that case?

It is easy to pity Auger, who needs no pity. It is difficult to pity
Gregoire, and yet he is so pitiable.

Do not forget; Auger is touched with grace; but Gregoire will be damned
if you do not hold out your hand to him.

God Himself, who has withheld grace from the damned, must feel pity for
them.

It is a very artless desire for equality which makes us say that all men
are equal in the presence of suffering. No! no! they are not. And as we
know nothing of Death but that which precedes and determines it, men are
not even equal in the presence of Death.

NIGHTS IN ARTOIS

I

One more glance into the dark ward, in which something begins to reign
which is not sleep, but merely a kind of nocturnal stupor.

The billiard-table has been pushed into a corner; it is loaded with an
incoherent mass of linen, bottles, and articles of furniture. A smell
of soup and excrements circulates between the stretchers, and seems to
insult the slender onyx vases that surmount the cabinet.

And now, quickly! quickly! Let us escape on tiptoe into the open air.

The night is clear and cold, without a breath of wind: a vast block
of transparent ice between the snow and the stars. Will it suffice
to cleanse throat and lungs, nauseated by the close effluvium of
suppurating wounds?

The snow clings and balls under our sabots. How good it would be to have
a game.... But we are overwhelmed by a fatigue that has become a kind of
exasperation. We will go to the end of the lawn.

Here is the great trench in which the refuse of the dressing-ward, all
the residuum of infection, steams and rots. Further on we come to the
musical pines, which Dalcour the miner visits every night, lantern in
hand, to catch sparrows, Dalcour, the formidable Zouave, whom no one can
persuade not to carry about his stiff leg and the gaping wound in his
bandaged skull in the rain.

Let us go as far as the wall