"Dry up—you're a nuisance! Take your beastly blanket, roll yourself in it, swelter in it, take it all for yourself, only leave me alone to sleep in peace!"
Porchon contrives to remain silent for at least a minute; then, in a sleepy voice:
"I say!"
"Well, what is it now?"
"It is a bit better here than in the Haumont Wood, what?"
"Rather!"
"Better even than the barn at Louvemont, don't you think?"
"Naturally!… But say, old man, don't you think we had better go to sleep?"
Two minutes later and Porchon is snoring. But no longer is there sleep for me. Scenes and memories have been evoked and flit across my mind to keep me constantly wakeful. What devil of mischief prompted the idiot to mention those things? He has set the machine working and now there is no stopping it!
And so in memory I live again through bad days, nightmare days—the réveil in the furious, stinging rain; the arrival at Louvemont, that indescribable village little better than a sewer. I had gone over to the quarters of the adjoining section because before their barn a little chimney-piece had been erected with some paving stones. There had been a fire of flaming logs, hissing and spluttering. We had stripped ourselves to the waist to let the grateful warmth of the flames play on our chests and backs and shoulders. Sitting on a bundle of straw we had found an old, white-bearded soldier, dreaming. I had gone up to him and said: