ination endowed with a soul of sinister life. . . . Despite the cold, perspiration in large drops was streaming upon my face. . . . I had a notion to quit my post, to return to camp, persuading myself by all sorts of ingenious and cowardly arguments that my comrades had forgotten all about me and that they would be glad to see me back with them. Obviously, since I had not been relieved by anyone from my company, and saw none of the officers make his round of inspection, they must have left. . . . But supposing I were mistaken about it, what excuse could I offer, and how would I be received at the camp? . . . To go back to the farm where my company was quartered this morning and ask for instructions? . . . I was thinking of doing it. . . . But in my plight I had lost all sense of direction, and if I attempted to do that I would surely get lost in this plain that was so endless and so black.
Then an abominable thought flashed through my mind. . . . Yes, why not discharge a bullet into my arm and run back, bleeding and wounded, and tell them that I had been attacked by the Prussians? . . . I had to make a strong effort to regain my reason which was leaving me; I had to gather all the moral forces that were left in me in order to get away from this cowardly and odious impulse, from this wretched ecstasy of fear, and I desperately strove to recall the memories of former times, to conjure up gentle and silent visions, sweet-scented and white-winged. . . . They came to me as in a painful dream, distorted, mutilated, under the spell of hallucination, and fear immediately threw them into confusion. . . . The Virgin of Saint-Michel, with a body of pink, in a blue mantle, adorned with golden stars, I saw in a lewd attitude, prostituting herself on a bed, in some miserable shack, with drunken soldiers. My favorite spots in the Tourouvre forest, so peaceful, where I used to
