going in," he proposed. He sat
down, heavy with the world of thought that entangled him. His forehead
was wrinkled. Then he turned towards me with an awkward air, as if he
were going to beg some favor: "Tell me, mate, I'm wondering if I'm
right."

But after looking at me, he looked at everything else, as though he
would rather consult them than me.

A transformation was taking place in the sky and on the earth. The fog
was hardly more than a fancy. Distances revealed themselves. The narrow
plain, gloomy and gray, was getting bigger, chasing its shadows away,
and assuming color. The light was passing over it from east to west
like sails.

And down there at our very feet, by the grace of distance and of light,
we saw Souchez among the trees--the little place arose again before our
eyes, new-born in the sunshine!

"Am I right?" repeated Poterloo, more faltering, more dubious.

Before I could speak he replied to himself, at first almost in a
whisper, as the light fell on him--"She's quite young, you know; she's
twenty-six. She can't hold her youth in, it's coming out of her all
over, and when she's resting in the lamp-light and the warmth, she's
got to smile; and even if she burst out laughing, it would just simply
be her youth, singing in her throat. It isn't on account of others, if
truth were told; it's on account of herself. It's life. She lives. Ah,
yes, she lives, and that's all. It isn't her fault if she lives. You
wouldn't have her die? Very well, what do you want her to do? Cry all
day on account of me and the Boches? Grouse? One can't cry all the
time, nor grouse for eighteen months. Can't be done. It's too long, I
tell you. That's all there is to it."

He stops speaking to look at the view of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, now
wholly illuminated.

"Same with the kid; when she found herself alongside a simpleton that
doesn't tell her to go and play with herself, she ends by wanting to
get on his knee. Perhaps she'd prefer that it was her uncle or a friend
or her father--perhaps--but she tries it on all the same with the only
man that's always there, even if it's a great hog in spectacles.

"Ah," he cries, as he gets up and comes gesticulating before me.
"There's a good answer one could give me. If I didn't come back from
the war, I should say, 'My lad, you've gone to smash, no more Clotilde,
no more love! You'll be replaced in her heart sooner or later; no
getting round it; your memory, the portrait of you that