"Alfred. Let us go to the trenches. Are they far away? The soldiers, Alfred—Sebastien said they would be as dead men, that they would throw away their arms and flee, suddenly stricken with the crime of their murders. And then will come the STUPOR, that will hold them asleep, motionless, the many millions—and then Alfred—I almost can hear him now telling me—the three days of the Presence of the Dead over them, and the terror, the punishment, and then, Alfred—you remember?—their weakness and remorse—and then Alfred, Peace—and then—" her voice faltered a moment, but only for a moment—"then Alfred, comes—, Ah, Alfred, do not think me cruel—then perhaps I shall leave you, and Sebastien will take me to Heaven."
Her voice became almost inaudible. I struggled with an overwhelming agony of sorrow, because—never had the thought been altogether absent—Gabrielle too might leave me, and then Ah God,—then I would be just a drifting relic, on the ocean of chance, unnoticed, unloved—ALONE. It seemed too hard, too cruel. Yet even amid the distracting misery of this anticipation, a curious malignancy of suspicion—No, not that—a pained wonder surprised me. Did Gabrielle love Sebastien Quintado? Did she seek him in Heaven? And Dora? What about her?
I lifted my eyes above into the magnificence that now enveloped our earth—this unearthly vapor or emission of spirits—and there above me in the air I saw the figure of Sebastien. The face above it was grave and smiling, the lips seemed moving in salutation, although I heard nothing. A form leaped past me. It was Gabrielle. Her outstretched arms were raised to the pallid spectre. The tableau lasted for a few minutes, and then the spirit shape vanished into the effluence above and around us. Gabrielle returned to my side.
"Alfred; come. Sebastien says the Spell of Heaven is on the Earth. He says, 'Go and See.' God's manifestation confounds the purposes of men. 'Go and See.' Come Alfred, I have new strength, new power. Nothing now can tire me. COME."
So silently, hand in hand, we walked through the groves, the hawthorn trees, the old grass clothed mounds, past mimic lakes reflecting the supernal fires, as though the moon shone on them, but diversified with the play of incomputable radiances, past the last long slope of meadow and out into the horrified, worshipping multitudes, making our way on, and on, and on, over the five mile walk to the trenches of the soldiers. My inquisitive thoughts left nothing unessayed, untried, unseen. And this is what I saw.
Beyond La Ferté stretched a diversified country-side, roads and fields, sloping descents into meadow-like expanses, whose grass and sedges were interrupted by low wooded islets, taller hillsides crowned by farm houses, thin strips of forest land, and uneven half hummocky ranges of elevations, crowding down upon narrow and shallow streams, with broader sweeps of scarcely undulating land, spreading upward to chalk terraces on the horizon, where burrowed the hidden chained chambers of the army, the masked batteries, the mud pasted trenches.
Everywhere were the people. They were the most numerous on the roads, where the blockade of carriages, vehicles, automobiles extended for miles. The fences were lined with spectators and over the farm-lands, in groups, and families, or sometimes in packed crowds, the populace was encountered.
We passed amongst them almost unnoticed. Here was a group of peasant folk kneeling on the grass, and led in prayer by a parson or a priest. Here others stood in mute masses, gazing upward aghast, or thrilled, or motionless, and numbed as in a trance. But there were exciting contrasts to all this immobility. Men were shouting with delirium; women singing in strident unison, their harsh voices rising in vocal yelps of pious song; in places I saw colonies thrown down upon the ground, men and women and children, rolling over and back again, against each other, in a queer rhythmic way, like some bed of mechanical reciprocating cylinders. It was almost ludicrous. Young men had climbed the trees, and their bodies bored the white radiance that enveloped the earth, with black patches, like spots of gloom. The roofs of the farmhouses and those of a few little villages we passed through were sometimes thickly invested with people, and against the lambent horizon they made serrated hedges of heads, broken now and again with ejaculating hands and arms.