Maxime held his peace, discouraged, and for the last
hour they spoke only of trifles. All but the mother felt that the
essential had not been uttered; only light and confident words, an
apparent excitement, but a deep sigh in the heart--"My God! my God!
why hast thou forsaken us?"
When Maxime left he was really glad to go back to the front. The gulf
that he had found between the front and rear seemed to him deeper than
the trenches, and guns did not appear to him as murderous as ideas.
As the railway carriage drew out of the station he leaned from the
window and followed with his eyes the tearful faces of his family
fading in the distance, and he thought:
"Poor dears, you are their victims and we are yours."
The day after his return to the front the great spring offensive was
let loose, which the talkative newspapers had announced to the enemy
several weeks beforehand. The hopes of the nation had been fed on it
during the gloomy winter of waiting and death, and it rose now, filled
with an impatient joy, sure of victory and crying out to it--"At
last!"
The first news seemed good; of course it spoke only of the enemy's
losses, and all faces brightened. Parents whose sons, women whose
husbands were "out there" were proud that their flesh and their love
had a part in this sanguinary feast; and in their exaltation they
hardly stopped to think that their dear one might be among the
victims.
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