I flew. I furrowed the ground, sowing the sacred fire in my tracks.
"Look, they can't touch us!"
They were no longer firing on our left. Hand-to-hand fighting must be going on—a cacophony. Noises which had nothing human left about them. No doubt the enemy was giving ground. I stumbled near a long ditch, a first-line trench, which they had already abandoned.
I felt sure that I was going to be killed, but oddly enough I cared very little. To-day or to-morrow, what did it matter! A thousand thoughts thronged each other in my mind. The dominant one, simple and sublime, was that Victory was leaning towards us. We should carry this hill, for I could see our men wriggling along the ground to rejoin us, and grouping themselves again.
The light and serenity, the frenzy of it! I swear that at that instant France was really something other than an abstract entity for me: the whole in which I participated, which was me and more than me. Of my own free will I was sacrificing my paltry individuality. I was melting a wan unit into the collective consciousness of the beings of my country.
Surprise may be caused by the fact that I found time to revolve all these thoughts in my mind during these brief moments, among this chaos, where I might be seen dashing about madly, expending myself in exhortations and reproaches.
Well, I did find time for them, and for a thousand others! I myself, lucid and multiplied, marvelled at it.
My resources were increased tenfold. I burst into blossom. I attained the apogee of my power. The instant in which I raised myself to the conception of the immense national soul was also that in which my own spirit was expanded most largely. Nothing escaped me. I was twenty beings. I had a tender thought for the memory of my mother; one for my brother who had fallen; for those of my people who remained. And you, Jeannine, my betrothed, I evoked your face and let my lips caress it lightly. I descried all that life we should have lived together, and tasted all its happiness to the full. I adored you, oh my well beloved! I was certain, that at that instant you knew that I was being killed for your sake, that you were proud of it, and sobbed for it.
My men were collected there, lying with their eyes fixed on me, already half raised, ready to dart forward.
As I looked at them and counted them over, a fantastic idea struck me. Fifty living men. In a minute, half of them would be dead, at a sign from me.