"What is the saddest thing you have seen, you?"
"It was at the beginning—we were in Belgium. It made me cry to see the burning towns, the poor people fleeing with everything they could carry, and that was not much. It was sad—and it gave one the blues! It hit them hard so suddenly—poor people——"
"And you, Pierre, what's the saddest tale you know of?"
"The death of Commandant Jeanniot, at Dixmude——"
There was deep silence, for they all recalled it. A man, aside from the others, had listened closely without speaking—the others turned toward him:
"And you, le vieux, what would you say?"
"The saddest? Allons, you have forgotten then our friend wounded between the lines who babbled 'mother' all night, and whom we could not rescue; the same whom we put out of misery!—when at dawn he called to us, 'Kill me—I suffer too much!'"
"And you shot him?" I asked.
"Yes, lieutenant, we killed him—but it is the saddest thing in my war——"
Tenez, it seemed to be a night just like this and I could almost hear the cry "mother" in a plaintive voice that grew farther and farther away——