"The individuality of the soldier is not obliterated," said La Villaumer. "Either he expects to come through safe, believing himself to be a privileged person among the unlucky, or else he says to himself, 'I shall die, but it will be for something worth while,' and that even exalts his individuality. When that disappears or becomes attenuated it is by excess of suffering, of hoping against hope for the end of all that he is enduring—mud, cold, the incessant wooing of death, and ills without number, have annihilated in him all power of thought and feeling. And still it would be speaking too strongly to say that he goes deliberately to meet death. Never has any living being failed to pay to death the honor of a particular deference."
"Do you think," asked Odette, "that one's individuality can be suddenly lost, or is it not rather unconsciously modified from day to day? You see, in the latter case no one can tell how far the metamorphosis may go! I see many people who have changed in the last eighteen months, and who seem not to be aware of it. I feel very clearly that I myself am different. I find only one part of myself unchanged; the part which binds me to the memory of my poor husband; nothing there is modified even in the very slightest degree—nothing; when I have leisure to think intently of him, I become again precisely the woman I used to be."
"Yes, but with grief in addition."
"That is true."
"It is that which modifies us. It broadens us when it finds a heart in us, and for that matter it exists only so far as it finds a heart. It holds within itself many possibilities. Your grief began with embracing your personal calamity; that alone; and it still hugs it to itself, that is most natural; but it has unconsciously taken a further step, embracing the sorrows of others, a change which you never looked for. And that is making of you another person."
"Will every one like me find themselves a tone above or below what they used to be—as if the whole keyboard had been transposed?"
"I do not think so," said La Villaumer. "Nature changes little. Only sensitive souls are modified, and they are rare. It is they who at last, at the long last, act upon and change those around them. Characters change little, never fear! Yet this war will have been so intense that those at least who have had a part in it will retain something of it, like a strong leaven which will cause new things to germinate. We must expect new things; but we must not look to see the human race thrown off its centre. Historians, sociologists will have their work to do, while philosophers, moralists, the general run of writers may go on as they have done. The word 'democracy,' for instance, will cover much paper——"
"Do you believe in such a thing, yourself?"
"I believe in the word as I believe in all words. It is a mistake to disdain the old-fashioned verbalism—rhetoric, eloquence. The majority of words are hollow—yes, but they are hollow like bells whose sonorousness may by itself shake the whole world. Those who use words are inspired by various things, and generally by sentiments that they cannot acknowledge; yet the word touches the finest chords in the soul of men whom one wants to win over. 'Democracy' has a tone——"
"Which will work good?—or evil?"