He whispers:  “The Red Tavern, where that—­where that Boche’s head is, and litters of beastliness all around, that sort of cesspool—­it was on the edge of the road, a brick house and two out-buildings alongside—­how many times, old man, on the very spot where we stood, how many times, there, the good woman who joked with me on her doorstep, I’ve given her good-day as I wiped my mouth and looked towards Souchez that I was going back to!  And then, after a few steps, I’ve turned round to shout some nonsense to her!  Oh, you cannot imagine!  But that, now, that!” He makes an inclusive gesture to indicate all the emptiness that surrounds him.

“We mustn’t stay here too long, old chap.  The fog’s lifting, you know.”

He stands up with an effort—­“Allons.”

The most serious part is yet to come.  His house—­

He hesitates, turns towards the east, goes.  “It’s there—­no, I’ve passed it.  It’s not there.  I don’t know where it is—­or where it was.  Ah, misery, misery!” He wrings his hands in despair and staggers in the middle of the medley of plaster and bricks.  Then, bewildered by this encumbered plain of lost landmarks, he looks questioningly about in the air, like a thoughtless child, like a madman.  He is looking for the intimacy of the bedrooms scattered in infinite space, for their inner form and their twilight now cast upon the winds!

After several goings and comings, he stops at one spot and draws back a little—­“It was there, I’m right.  Look—­it’s that stone there that I knew it by.  There was a vent-hole there, you can see the mark of the bar of iron that was over the hole before it disappeared.”

Sniffling he reflects, and gently shaking his head as though he could not stop it:  “It is when you no longer have anything that you understand how happy you were.  Ah, how happy we were!”

He comes up to me and laughs nervously:  “It’s out of the common, that, eh?  I’m sure you’ve never seen yourself like it—­can’t find the house where you’ve always lived since—­since always—­”

He turns about, and it is he who leads me away: 

“Well, let’s leg it, since there is nothing.  Why spend a whole hour looking at places where things were?  Let’s be off, old man.”

We depart—­the only two living beings to be seen in that unreal and miasmal place, that village which bestrews the earth and lies under our feet.

We climb again.  The weather is clearing and the fog scattering quickly.  My silent comrade, who is making great strides with lowered head, points out a field:  “The cemetery,” he says; “it was there before it was everywhere, before it laid hold on everything without end, like a plague.”

Half-way, we go more slowly, and Poterloo comes close to me-"You know, it’s too much, all that.  It’s wiped out too much—­all my life up to now.  It makes me afraid—­it is so completely wiped out.”

“Come; your wife’s in good health, you know; your little girl, too.”