furrow this part of the earth, and now it finds the threshold of our
holes. It is the melancholy light of the North Country, of a
restricted and muddy sky, a sky which itself, one would say, is
heavy with the smoke and smell of factories. In this leaden light,
the uncouth array of these dwellers in the depths reveals the stark
reality of the huge and hopeless misery that brought it into being.
But that is like the rattle of rifles and the verberation of
artillery. The drama in which we are actors has lasted much too long
for us to be surprised any more, either at the stubbornness we have
evolved or the garb we have devised against the rain that comes from
above, against the mud that comes from beneath, and against the
cold--that sort of infinity that is everywhere. The skins of
animals, bundles of blankets, Balaklava helmets, woolen caps, furs,
bulging mufflers (sometimes worn turban-wise), paddings and
quiltings, knittings and double-knittings, coverings and roofings
and cowls, tarred or oiled or rubbered, black or all the colors
(once upon a time) of the rainbow--all these things mask and magnify
the men, and wipe out their uniforms almost as effectively as their
skins. One has fastened on his back a square of linoleum, with a big
draught-board pattern in white and red, that he found in the middle
of the dining-room of some temporary refuge. That is Pepin.
We know him afar off by his harlequin placard sooner even than by
his pale Apache face. Here is Barque's bulging chest-protector,
carven from an eiderdown quilt, formerly pink, but now fantastically
bleached and mottled by dust and rain. There, Lamuse the Huge rises
like a ruined tower to which tattered posters still cling. A cuirass
of moleskin, with the fur inside, adorns little Eudore with the
burnished back of a beetle; while the golden corselet of Tulacque
the Big Chief surpasses all.