thing we got
out of this blooming war; that there were lots of poor devils in the
world who don't know each other, but are all made alike. Sometimes we
call 'em our brothers, in sermons and places like that, but no one
takes much stock in it. If you want to know it's true, you have to
slave together like us--He kissed me then, Sir."

Clerambault rose, and bending over the bandaged face, kissed the
wounded man's rough cheek.

"Tell me something that I can do for you," he said.

"You are very good, Sir, but there's not much you can do now. I am so
used up. No legs, and a broken arm. I'm no good,--what could I work
at? Besides, it's not sure yet that I shall pull through. We'll have
to leave it at that. If I go out, good-bye. If not, can't do anything
but wait. There are plenty of trains."

As Clerambault admired his patience, he repeated his refrain: "I've
got the habit. There's no merit in being patient when there's nothing
else to do.... A little more or less, what does it matter?... It's
like life, this war is."

Clerambault saw that in his egotism he had asked the man nothing about
himself. He did not even know his name.

"My name? It's a good fit for me,--Courtois Aime is what they call
me--Aime, that's the Christian name, fine for an unlucky fellow like
me, and Courtois on the top of it. Queer enough, isn't it?... I never
had a family, came out of an Orphan Asylum; my foster-father, a farmer
down in Champagne, offered to bring me up; and you can bet he did it!
I had all the training I wanted; but anyhow it learned me what I had
to expect. I've had all that was coming to me!"

Thereupon he told in a few brief dry phrases, without emotion, of the
series of bad luck which had made up his life. Marriage with a girl as
poor as himself--"hunger wedding thirst," as they say, sickness and
death, the struggle with nature,--it would not be so bad if men would
only help.... _Homo, homini ... homo_.... All the social injustice
weighs on the under dog. As he listened Clerambault could not keep
down his indignation, but Aime Courtois took it as a matter of course;
that's the way it always has been, and always will be; some are born
to suffer, others not. You can't have mountains without valleys. The
war seemed perfectly idiotic to him, but he would not have lifted a
finger to prevent it. He had in his way the fatalist passivity of the
people, which hides itself, on Gallic soil, behind a veil of ironic
carelessness. The "