If Madame Lelanne ever
slept, it was when she would sit in the shadow behind the stove, her
hands upon her knees. Dubos had been in the house when it had fallen.
Madame Lelanne had discovered him pinned against a wall underneath a
great oak beam that had withstood the falling debris. His beard had been
burnt off, but otherwise he had been unharmed.
She seemed to be living in a dream. She could not shake from her the
feeling that it was not bodies but souls that she was tending. The men
themselves gave colour to this fancy of hers. Stripped of their poor,
stained, tattered uniforms, they were neither French nor Germans. Friend
or foe! it was already but a memory. Often, awakening out of a sleep,
they would look across at one another and smile as to a comrade. A great
peace seemed to have entered there. Faint murmurs as from some distant
troubled world would steal at times into the silence. It brought a pang
of pity, but it did not drive away the quiet that dwelt there.
Once, someone who must have known the place and had descended the steps
softly, sat there among them and talked with them.
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