Sniffling he reflects, and gently shaking his head as though he could not stop it: "It is when you no longer have anything that you understand how happy you were. Ah, how happy we were!"
He comes up to me and laughs nervously: "It's out of the common, that, eh? I'm sure you've never seen yourself like it—can't find the house where you've always lived since—since always—"
He turns about, and it is he who leads me away:
"Well, let's leg it, since there is nothing. Why spend a whole hour looking at places where things were? Let's be off, old man."
We depart—the only two living beings to be seen in that unreal and miasmal place, that village which bestrews the earth and lies under our feet.
We climb again. The weather is clearing and the fog scattering quickly. My silent comrade, who is making great strides with lowered head, points out a field: "The cemetery," he says; "it was there before it was everywhere, before it laid hold on everything without end, like a plague."
Half-way, we go more slowly, and Poterloo comes close to me-"You know, it's too much, all that. It's wiped out too much—all my life up to now. It makes me afraid—it is so completely wiped out."
"Come; your wife's in good health, you know; your little girl, too."
He looks at me comically: "My wife—I'll tell you something; my wife—"
"Well?"