and acquires the domain of Space. The walls of the Shadow crumble in
vague ruin. Once more we pass under the grand panorama of the day's
unfolding upon the ever-wandering horde that we are.

We emerge at last from this night of marching, across concentric
circles as it seems, of darkness less dark, then of half-shadow, then
of gloomy light. Legs have a wooden stiffness, backs are benumbed,
shoulders bruised. Faces are still so gray or so black, one would say
they had but half rid themselves of the night. Now, indeed, one never
throws it off altogether.

It is into new quarters that the great company is going--this time to
rest. What will the place be like that we have to live in for eight
days? It is called, they say--but nobody is certain of
anything--Gauchin-l'Abbe. We have heard wonders about it--"It appears
to be just it."

In the ranks of the companies whose forms and features one begins to
make out in the birth of morning, and to distinguish the lowered heads
and yawning mouths, some voices are heard in still higher praise.
"There never were such quarters. The Brigade's there, and the
court-martial. You can get anything in the shops."--"If the Brigade's
there, we're all right."--

"Think we can find a table for the squad?"--"Everything you want, I
tell you."

A pessimist prophet shakes his head: "What these quarters'll be like
where we ye never been, I don't know," he says. "What I do know is that
it'll be like the others."

But we don't believe him, and emerging from the fevered turmoil of the
night, it seems to all that it is a sort of Promised Land we are
approaching by degrees the light brings us out of the east and the icy
air towards the unknown village.

At the foot of a bill in the half-light, we reach some houses, still
slumbering and wrapped in heavy grayness.

"There it is!"

Poof! We've done twenty-eight kilometers in the night. But what of
that? There is no halt. We go past the houses, and they sink back again
into their vague vapors and their mysterious shroud.

"Seems we've got to march a long time yet. It's always there, there,
there!"

We march like machines, our limbs invaded by a sort of petrified
torpor; our joints cry aloud, and force us to make echo.

Day comes slowly, for a blanket of mist covers the earth. It is so cold
that the men dare not sit down during the halts, though overborne by
weariness, and they pace to and fro in the damp obscurity like ghosts.
The besom of a