winging in the wind, stood
out more sharply than the others, pierced like a sieve a hundred times
through and through, and a void in the place of his heart. Another
specter, quite near, had doubtless long since disintegrated, while held
up by his clothes. At the time when the shadow of night began to seize
us in its greatness a wind arose, a wind which shook the desiccated
creature, and he emptied himself of a mass of mold and dust. One saw
the sky's whirlwind, dark and disheveled, in the place where the man
had been; the soldier was carried away by the wind and buried in the
sky.

Towards the end of the afternoon the piercing whistle of the bullets
was redoubled. We were riddled and battered by the noise. The
wariness with which we watched the landscape that was watching us
seemed to exasperate Marcassin. He pondered an idea; then came to a
sudden decision and cried triumphantly, "Look!"

He climbed to the parapet, stood there upright, shook his fist at space
with the blind and simple gesture of the apostle who is offering his
example and his heart, and shouted, "Death to the Boches!"

Then he came down, quivering with the faith of his self-gift.

"Better not do that again," growled the soldiers who were lined up in
the trench, gorgonized by the extraordinary sight of a living man
standing, for no reason, on a front line parapet in broad daylight,
stupefied by the rashness they admired although it outstripped them.

"Why not? Look!"

Marcassin sprang up once more. Lean and erect, he stood like a poplar,
and raising both arms straight into the air, he yelled, "I believe only
in the glory of France!"

Nothing else was left for him; he was but a conviction. Hardly had he
spoken thus in the teeth of the invisible hurricane when he opened his
arms, assumed the shape of a cross against the sky, spun round, and
fell noisily into the middle of the trench and of our cries.

He had rolled onto his belly. We gathered round him. With a jerk he
turned on to his back, his arms slackened, and his gaze drowned in his
eyes. His blood began to spread around him, and we drew our great
boots away, that we should not walk on that blood.

"He died like an idiot," said Margat in a choking voice; "but by God
it's fine!"

He took off his cap, saluted awkwardly and stood with bowed head.

"Committing suicide for an idea, it's fine," mumbled Vidaine.

"It's fine, it's fine!" other voices said.

And these little words