"I don't think I just remember what he said." Then he shut his eyes, and lay still, while Clerambault bent over him and tried to see what was before those eyes under their closed lids.
* * * * *
An icy moonless night. From the bottom of the hollow boyau one could see the cold sky and the fixed stars. Bullets rattled on the hard ground. Maxime and his friend sat huddled up in the trench, smoking with their chins on their knees. The lad had come back that day from Paris. He was depressed, would not answer questions, shut himself up in a sulky silence. The other had left him all the afternoon to bear his trouble alone. Now here in the darkness he felt that the moment had come, and sat a little closer, for he knew that the boy would speak of his own accord. A bullet over their heads glanced off, knocking down a lump of frozen turf.
"Hullo, old gravedigger," said the other, "don't get too fresh."
"Might as well make an end of it now," said Maxime. "That's what they all seem to want."
"Give the boche your skin for a present? I'll say you're generous!"
"It's not only the boches; they all have a hand in it."
"Who, all?"
"All of them back there where I come from, in Paris, friends and relations; the people on the other side of the grave, the live ones.—As for us, we are as good as dead."
In the long silence that followed they could hear the scream of a shell across the sky. Maxime's comrade blew out a mouthful of smoke. "Well, youngster," he said, "it didn't go right, back there this time, did it?—I guessed as much!"