We walked together, close behind the boy, who had no one but we two and five of his comrades to follow him.
It was hot, there was no air at all. There was a terrible odour of disinfectant.
Madame Bayle said, "It is because of the gangrene," and quite worried for fear I could not stand it.
And I worried about her bad knee. Was it bad to-day? I was afraid she would be very tired.
We felt most sympathetically about each other.
She kept saying, "It is all the same sad, it is all the same sad."
One of the wounded said, "Not so sad as to lie out for the crows in no-man's-land."
The Garde Républicaine, standing at attention, formed an aisle for him and for us to pass through into the church. Of course, they never come into the church.
Madame Bayle, kneeling stiffly beside him, went on whispering, "C'est tout de même triste," as if it were a sort of prayer. "C'est tout de même triste d'être seul comme ça."
An old woman appeared from somewhere and put a little bunch of marguerites on his flag, and went away again. The stems of the marguerites were done up in white paper. Some women came and stayed; and some little girls, and a troop of small boys, in black blouses, just let out from the school opposite.
When it was over, they all filed out, past Madame Bayle and me, as we stood in the place where would have been his people.
On and on we went, through streets always sadder and more sad as they frayed out at the edge of the city.
Madame Bayle always shuffled and panted, and the wounded followed more and more slowly.
The city gate, and the ramparts, and longer, wider, even sadder streets to pass along, over the cobbles; then an avenue of limes in fragrant blossom, and the entrance of the great cemetery.
The piquet d'honneur left us at the gate, and we were just ourselves to go on with him to the place where the soldiers who are lonely like him lie, so many of them together.
It is a beautiful place. When his people can come to him I think they will be proud to find him in so beautiful a place.
We put our flowers with him, and went away Madame Bayle always saying, "C'est triste tout de même, d'être comme ça, tout seul."
The wounded went so fast ahead of us out of the cemetery that Madame Bayle could not keep up at all.