"One moment...." From under the packing-box the captain produced a small bottle of anisette. "You'll have a little glass, won't you?"
"With the greatest pleasure. What a rarity here, anisette."
"But, as I was about to say, take our life here, for an example." ... A shell shrieks overhead and crashes hollowly in the woods behind the dugout. Another follows it, exploding nearer. The captain picks a few bits of gravel off the table, reaches for his helmet and continues. "For example, our life here, which is, as was the life of palæolithic man, taken up only with the bare struggle for existence against overwhelming odds. You know yourself that it is not conducive to religion or any emotion except that of preservation."
"I hardly admit that.... Ah, I saved it," the aumonier announces, catching the bottle of anisette as it is about to fall off the table. An exploding shell rends the air about them. There is a pause, and a shower of earth and gravel tumbles about their ears.
"I must go and see if anyone was hurt," says the aumonier, clambering up the clay bank to the level of the ground; "but you will admit, my captain, that the sentiment of preservation is at least akin to the fundamental feelings of religion."
"My dear friend, I admit nothing.... Till this evening, good-bye." He waves his hand and goes into the dugout.
Martin and two French soldiers drinking sour wine in the doorway of a deserted house. It was raining outside and now and then a dripping camion passed along the road, slithering through the mud.
"This is the last summer of the war.... It must be," said the little man with large brown eyes and a childish, chubby brown face, who sat on Martin's left.
"Why?"