The man they trepanned yesterday will not keep still; he worries about everything. They say he is doing well, but he talks all the time. They told me to sit by him and try to make him stay quiet. At first he held my hand and seemed to rest, but he would not shut his eyes, and after a little he began to talk again.
He was worried because he thought I had not enough to eat; he thought, because I was so thin, that I must be very poor. He said he had some biscuits and some rillettes de Tours done up together in a piece of newspaper. The package had been in his musette when he went into the charge. Where was his musette? He would have me go and find it, and eat the biscuits, and the rillettes de Tours. He worried because he had fallen back into a trench deep with water, and the newspaper package might have got wet. But I must not mind that, he said, it was better than starving. What had they done with his musette? I must go and get it. And I must not mind taking his biscuits and rillettes de Tours, for he was not hungry at all.
Monday, July 10th
All day long there has been sunshine, and the sky has been blue. There were great white clouds that mounted up over the city, and that one kept imagining was the smoke of battle. The blue of the sky was wonderful, infinite and near, like something of music or of religion, and the sunshine was like golden wine. But those soft white puffs of cloud were terrible.
At the top of the Champs Elysées, behind the Arch, the clouds were driven up as if it were from the mouths of cannon.
It must be just like that the smoke is rising in the sunshine over the high edge of a field I used to know. They say that field is laid across everywhere with railroad tracks, along which monster grey cannon crawl up to their positions, and crawl back across again when their work is done. Hundreds of horses are corralled in the field, and everywhere there are dotted little white tents. Sometimes black faces come to the openings of the tents, and one would think of the Village Nègre people went to see in Magic City, ages and ages ago.
It seems strange that when the great white clouds mounted up from behind the Arch of Triumph, the city did not rock beneath them. It seems strange that the great white clouds rose silently and really were only clouds.
Thursday, July 13th
People in the streets go slowly, looking up at the flags, and stopping to stand. They speak to one another wherever they happen to be standing together, and say that they hope to-morrow will be a fine day.
The streets are getting ready for to-morrow, hanging out flags and streamers and garlands to the breeze that is strong to-day, and to the comings and goings of sunshine. Grey minutes and gold minutes follow one another across the city, where the flags of the different nations are blending their colours and waving all together.