A branch brushed against my face; I recoiled, seized with terror. Further away, a rise in the ground appeared to me like a man who with crooked back seemed to be crawling toward me; I loaded my rifle. … At the sight of an abandoned plough with its arms turned upward toward the sky, like the menacing horns of some monster, my breath left me and I almost fell on my back. … I was afraid of the shadow, of the silence, of the least object that extended beyond the line of the horizon and which my deranged imagination 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 stay for entire days, stretched out on the mossy ground, were turning topsy-turvy, tangled up, brandishing their gigantic trees over me; then a few howitzer shells crossed one another in the air, resembling familiar faces which sniggered; one of these projectiles suddenly spread out wide wings, flame-colored, which swung around me and enveloped me. … I cried out. … My God, am I going crazy? I felt my breast, my chest, my back, my legs. … I must have been as pale as a corpse, and I felt a shiver passing through me from heart to brain, like a steel bore. …
“Let’s see now,” I said aloud to myself to make sure that I was awake, that I was alive. … In two gulps I swallowed the remainder of the whiskey in my flask, and I started to walk very fast, tramping with rage upon the clods under my feet, whistling the air of a soldier song which we used to sing in chorus to relieve the tedium of the march. Somewhat calmed, I came back to the oak tree and kicked its trunk with the sole of my boots; for I was in need of this noise and this physical motion. … And now I thought of my father so lonely at the Priory. It was more than three weeks since I had received a letter from him. Oh! How sad and heartrending his last letter was! … It did not complain of anything, but one felt in it a deep despair, a wearisomeness of being alone in that large empty house, and anxiety about me who, he knew, was wandering, knapsack on back, amidst the dangers of battle. … Poor father! He had not been happy with my mother—who was ill, always fretful, who did not love him and could not stand his presence. … And never a sign of reproach, not even when meeting with the most painful rebuff and unkindness! … He used to bend his back like a dog, and walk out. …
Ah! how I repented of the fact that I did not love him enough. Perhaps he had not brought me up in the manner he should have done. But what difference did it make? He did everything he could! … He was himself without experience in life, defenseless against evil, of a kindly but timid nature. And in the measure that the features of my father stood out clearly before me even to their smallest details, the face of my mother was obliterating itself, and I was no longer able to recall its endearing outline. At this moment all the affection that I had for my mother I transferred to my father. I recalled with tenderness how on the day my mother died he took me on his lap and said, “Perhaps it’s for the best.” And now I understood how much sorrow accumulated in the past and terror in facing the future there was summed up in that phrase. It was for her sake that he said that, and also for the sake
