He shuffles his feet and looks foolish. "The captain wanted to have me cited all right. He's a chic type, but I said he'd better not."
"Don't you want the croix de guerre?" I cry, astounded at such apathy even from Amieux.
"Oh, I wouldn't mind. It's my mother."
"Don't you suppose your mother would love to have her son decorated?" I feel there must be some absurd misunderstanding between us, the man seems to be talking such nonsense.
"Well, you see, my mother ... my only brother was killed last winter. Maman worries a good deal about me, and I told her, just so she could sleep quietly, you know, I have told her my company isn't near the front at all. I said we were guarding a munitions depot at the rear."
"Well ..." I am still at a loss.
"Well, don't you see, if I get the croix de guerre for being under fire, maman would get to worrying again. So I told my captain I'd rather he'd give it to one of the other fellows."
V
I had just come from several hours spent with one of the war-blind, one of those among the educated, unresigned war-blind, who see too clearly with the eyes of their intelligence what has happened to them. I had been with him, looking into his sightless face, pitting my strength against the bitterness of his voice; and I was tired, tired to the marrow of my bones, to the tip of every nerve.
But the children had not been out for their walk and the day was that rare thing in a Paris March, a sunshiny one, not to be wasted. "Come, dears," I told them as I entered the apartment, "get on your wraps. We'll all go out for a play while the sun is still high."