There are women and old people and children and soldiers, fine straight young chasseurs alpins from the garrison, like chamois hunters, with béret and mountain-horn, and wounded soldiers from the hospitals, and from the dépôt d'éclopés, with crutches and canes and white bandages.
The swallows are flying low back and forth across the cobbles of the Place and crying.
Behind the tower of the Cathedral, the great purple mass of the mountains stands out against the sunset. The smell of the mountains, of vineyards and cows and cool waters, comes down to the smells of the town's living in the Place.
II
Inside the church there are no lights, except of so much of sunset as comes in under the low arches, and of the red lamp, and of the candles, burning for Our Lady of Victories, and for the new Saint Jeanne d'Arc. Among the dusky figures, very still, in the church, you see white things. Sometimes it is the white cap of an old crone and sometimes it is a white bandage.
III
The church smells like a hospital. There is no more the smell of incense in the church, that used to linger there from office to office through the years. You wonder if really ever the church smelled of incense and wax candles. The smell of hospital has so come to belong there.
Americans
He did not seem so very ill. He had not that look of being made of wax. And he talked all the time. Most of them die so silently.
He lay in the bright ward and talked all of the time.