broken. It was worn out. The thin spring had snapped. I could never
fight again. Any loud noise made me shake all over. I knew that I could
never face a battle--impossible! I should certainly lose my nerve and
run away. It is a damned feeling, that broken something inside of one.
I can't describe it."

Pierre stopped for a moment and moistened his dry lips with the tip of
his tongue.

"I know," said Father Courcy. "I understand perfectly what you want to
say. It was like being lost and thinking that nothing could save you; a
feeling that is piercing and dull at the same time, like a heavy weight
pressing on you with sharp stabs in it. It was what they call
shellshock, a terrible thing. Sometimes it drives men crazy for a
while. But the doctors know what to do for that malady. It passes. You
got over it."

"No," answered Pierre, "the doctors may not have known that I had it.
At all events, they did not know what to do for it. It did not pass. It
grew worse. But I hid it, talking very little, never telling anybody
how I felt. They said I was depressed and needed cheering up. All the
while there was that black snake coiled around my heart, squeezing
tighter and tighter. But my body grew stronger every day. The wounds
were all healed. I was walking around. In July the doctor-in-chief sent
for me to his office. He said: 'You are cured, Pierre Duval, but you
are not yet fit to fight. You are low in your mind. You need cheering
up. You are to have a month's furlough and repose. You shall go home to
your farm. How is it that you call it?' I suppose I had been babbling
about it in my sleep and one of the nurses had told him. He was always
that way, that little Doctor Roselly, taking an interest in the men,