I arrived at last at the end of my journey, having asked myself a thousand times whether I should not be pulverised on the way there. The worst bit was when I reached the last cross-roads. For the second time I asked an orderly whether this was the house—pardon, the cellar—of Captain Mahot, and for the second time I heard an irritated voice reply, “Don’t stay there in the middle of the street”; but this time I lost the end of the phrase, being blinded and deafened. The heavens seemed to fall on me. I heard, “Get under cover,” and I felt my tympanum shattered. A house twenty mètres from me, a large two-storied house, seemed to be transformed into a volcano. A shell had entered its middle, through the roof, and _the whole house collapsed into the street_, accompanied by a formidable fall of rafters, bricks and furniture. “You see that,” said the orderly in a severe tone; “get into the cellar.” I felt just like a little boy.
Five marines had been buried under the ruins. A little later I saw their bodies on stretchers. What a lamentable death for a sailor or soldier!
Captain Mahot said to me, “The billeting area of the 22nd Dragoons? Very good, there it is,” and he showed me the butt-end of “the shepstraat.” I looked at it in astonishment, saying to myself, “That?” Messina after the earthquake would have offered more comfort. Nevertheless I inspected the cellars and apportioned them amongst the troops, and, by myself this time, I returned through the town to my point of departure, to meet and conduct Captain Vigoureux, whom I found three hundred mètres beyond the gates.
This made the fourth time that I had made this disquieting journey. I began to feel that I had had enough of it, the more so as I had walked twelve kilomètres, and, not being accustomed to carrying a pack, my back hurt me. Clère was quite knocked up, and had looked at once so sad and so comic that I did not know whether to laugh at him or to pity him.
The regiment settled in more or less (rather less) in the sector reserved for it. The cellars were crowded. My orderly, who was a treasure of devotion and very inventive, arranged my kit, found me a candle and spread a mattress. I was kept on the run, everyone called me at once: “A man wanted for the guard-room, a liaison officer to see the Captain, a man wanted for water fatigue, the quartermaster-sergeant wants to know how things are here, the 3rd troop have no billets and so on.” ... I tried to reply to everyone, and my head was like a whirlpool. It was impossible to keep the men in, though there were strict orders that they were not to leave the cellars. They broke out in every direction, and, in spite of the shells, they amused themselves like children, entering the houses at the peril of their lives. One of them brought me a stuffed stork; another a cornet and a draught screen; my orderly came last with a woman’s mantlet, trimmed with lace!