Other memories are called up and buzz about among the buried wounded; it is like the purring of countless gear-wheels in a machine that turns and turns.  And I hear afar him who repeats from his seat, “What’s the use of worrying?” in all possible tones, commanding a pitiful, sometimes like a prophet and anon like one shipwrecked; he metrifies with his cry the chorus of choking and plaintive voices that try so terribly to extol their suffering.

Some one comes forward, blindly feeling the wall with his stick, and reaches me.  It is Farfadet!  I call him, and he turns nearly towards me to tell me that one eye is gone, and the other is bandaged as well.  I give him my place, take him by the shoulders and make him sit down.  He submits, and seated at the base of the wall waits patiently, with the resignation of his clerkly calling, as if in a waiting-room.

I come to anchor a little farther away, in an empty space where two prostrate men are talking to each other in low voices; they are so near to me that I hear them without listening.  They are two soldiers of the Foreign Legion; their helmets and greatcoats are dark yellow.

“It’s not worth while to make-believe about it,” says one of them banteringly.  “I’m staying here this time.  It’s finished—­my bowels are shot through.  If I were in a hospital, in a town, they’d operate on me in time, and it might stick up again.  But here!  It was yesterday I got it.  We’re two or three hours from the Bethune road, aren’t we?  And how many hours, think you, from the road to an ambulance where they can operate?  And then, when are they going to pick us up?  It’s nobody’s fault, I dare say; but you’ve got to look facts in the face.  Oh, I know it isn’t going to be any worse from now than it is, but it can’t be long, seeing I’ve a hole all the way through my parcel of guts.  You, your foot’ll get all right, or they’ll put you another one on.  But I’m going to die.”

“Ah!” said the other, convinced by the reasoning of his neighbor.  The latter goes on—­“Listen, Dominique.  You’ve led a bad life.  You cribbed things, and you were quarrelsome when drunk.  You’ve dirtied your ticket in the police register, properly.”

“I can’t say it isn’t true, because it is,” says the other; “but what have you got to do with it?”

“You’ll lead a bad life again after the war, inevitably; and then you’ll have bother about that affair of the cooper.”

The other becomes fierce and aggressive.  “What the hell’s it to do with you?  Shut your jaw!”

“As for me, I’ve no more family than you have.  I’ve nobody, except Louise—­and she isn’t a relation of mine, seeing we’re not married.  And there are no convictions against me, beyond a few little military jobs.  There’s nothing on my name.”

“Well, what about it?  I don’t care a damn.”

“I’m going to tell you.  Take my name.  Take it—­I give it you; as long as neither of us has any family.”