But those who are left, his wife, his child!... That is where sorrow begins. They don’t know yet, and for a long time they will know nothing and will live in anxiety.
To-day, at the very hour perhaps, when we let him down in his last resting place, his wife received the letter he wrote her yesterday morning. She read this letter to her child, this letter in which he announces his next arrival on leave, where he said to her,
“In a week or two I shall be with you without a doubt.” He never will be now, or, rather, he is there already, for the immaterial presence of loved ones accompanies us, if it is true that they are loved and are not forgotten.
And pensively, under the fine rain which is falling, we return to our cantonments.
CHAPTER X
AN ORDINARY FATIGUE PARTY
This evening the first section has to go on the works. The men have eaten earlier than usual, and they are on the road before nightfall.
The column remains in good order to the end of the cantonment, but once across the passage by the knotty elm at Harbonnières, it breaks ranks. Each one goes along as he likes, talking or alone.
There is madness in the air. We prefer another order of things than to spend one evening out of two in the first line digging in the mud.