He crossed his arms and tossed his head:  “The future!” he cried all at once as a prophet might.  “How will they regard this slaughter, they who’ll live after us, to whom progress—­which comes as sure as fate—­will at last restore the poise of their conscience?  How will they regard these exploits which even we who perform them don’t know whether one should compare them with those of Plutarch’s and Corneille’s heroes or with those of hooligans and apaches?

“And for all that, mind you,” Bertrand went on. “there is one figure that has risen above the war and will blaze with the beauty and strength of his courage—­”

I listened, leaning on a stick and towards him, drinking in the voice that came in the twilight silence from the lips that so rarely spoke.  He cried with a clear voice—­“Liebknecht!”

He stood up with his arms still crossed.  His face, as profoundly serious as a statue’s, drooped upon his chest.  But he emerged once again from his marble muteness to repeat, “The future, the future!  The work of the future will be to wipe out the present, to wipe it out more than we can imagine, to wipe it out like something abominable and shameful.  And yet—­this present—­it had to be, it had to be!  Shame on military glory, shame on armies, shame on the soldier’s calling, that changes men by turns into stupid victims or ignoble brutes.  Yes, shame.  That’s the true word, but it’s too true; it’s true in eternity, but it’s not yet true for us.  It will be true when there is a Bible that is entirely true, when it is found written among the other truths that a purified mind will at the same time let us understand.  We are still lost, still exiled far from that time.  In our time of to-day, in these moments, this truth is hardly more than a fallacy, this sacred saying is only blasphemy!”

A kind of laugh came from him, full of echoing dreams—­“To think I once told them I believed in prophecies, just to kid them!”

I sat down by Bertrand’s side.  This soldier who had always done more than was required of him and survived notwithstanding, stood at that moment in my eyes for those who incarnate a lofty moral conception, who have the strength to detach themselves from the hustle of circumstances, and who are destined, however little their path may run through a splendor of events, to dominate their time.

“I have always thought all those things,” I murmured.

“Ah!” said Bertrand.  We looked at each other without a word, with a little surprised self-communion.  After this full silence he spoke again.  “It’s time to start duty; take your rifle and come.”

* * * * * *

From our listening-post we see towards the east a light spreading like a conflagration, but bluer and sadder than buildings on fire.  It streaks the sky above a long black cloud which extends suspended like the smoke of an extinguished fire, like an immense stain on the world.  It is the returning morning.