French side, about 10,000 kilometers [note 2] of trenches, and as
much again on the German side. And the French front is only about
one-eighth of the whole war-front of the world.

Thus speaks Cocon, and he ends by saying to his neighbor, "In all
that lot, you see what we are, us chaps?"

Poor Barque's head droops. His face, bloodless as a slum child's, is
underlined by a red goatee that punctuates his hair like an
apostrophe: "Yes, it's true, when you come to think of it. What's a
soldier, or even several soldiers?--Nothing, and less than nothing,
in the whole crowd; and so we see ourselves lost, drowned, like the
few drops of blood that we are among all this flood of men and
things."

Barque sighs and is silent, and the end of his discourse gives a
chance of hearing to a bit of jingling narrative, told in an
undertone: "He was coming along with two horses--Fs-s-s--a shell;
and he's only one horse left."

"You get fed up with it," says Volpatte.

"But you stick it," growls Barque.

"You've got to," says Paradis.

"Why?" asks Marthereau, without conviction.

"No need for a reason, as long as we've got to."