"True enough, seeing that they're men."

* * * * * *

The day matures. A little more light has trickled through the mists
that enclose the earth. But the sky has remained overcast, and now
it dissolves in rain; With a slowness which itself disheartens, the
wind brings back its great wet void upon us. The rain-haze makes
everything clammy and dull--even the Turkey red of Lamuse s cheeks,
and even the orange armor that caparisons Tulacque. The water
penetrates to the deep joy with which dinner endowed us, and puts it
out. Space itself shrinks; and the sky, which is a field of
melancholy, comes closely down upon the earth, which is a field of
death.

We are still there, implanted and idle. It will be hard to-day to
reach the end of it, to get rid of the afternoon. We shiver in
discomfort, and keep shifting our positions, like cattle enclosed.

Cocon is explaining to his neighbor the arrangement and intricacy of
our trenches. He has seen a military map and made some calculations.
In the sector occupied by our regiment there are fifteen lines of
French trenches. Some are abandoned, invaded by grass, and half
leveled; the others solidly upkept and bristling with men. These
parallels are joined up by innumerable galleries which hook and
crook themselves like ancient streets. The system is much more dense
than we believe who live inside it. On the twenty-five kilometers'
width that form the army front, one must count on a thousand
kilometers of hollowed lines--trenches and saps of all sorts. And
the French Army consists of ten such armies. There are then, on the