Chapter XIV

The colloquy between the rival gods took place at the foot of the great staircase.

The Arab soldier had just died. It was the Arab one used to see under a shed, seated gravely on the ground in the midst of other magnificent Arabs. In those days they had boots of crimson leather, and majestic red mantles. They used to sit in a circle, contemplating from under their turbans the vast expanse of mud watered by the skies of Artois. To-day, they wear the ochre helmet, and show the profiles of Saracen warriors.

The Algerian has just been killed, kicked in the belly by his beautiful white horse.

In the ambulance there was a Mussulman orderly, a well-to-do tradesman, who had volunteered for the work. He, on the other hand, was extremely European, nay, Parisian; but a plump, malicious smile showed itself in the midst of his crisp grey beard, and he had the look in the eyes peculiar to those who come from the other side of the Mediterranean.

Rashid "behaved very well." He had found native words when tending the dying man, and had lavished on him the consolations necessary to those of his country.

When the Algerian was dead, he arranged the winding-sheet himself, in his own fashion; then he lighted a cigarette, and set out in search of Monet and Renaud.

For lack of space, we had no mortuary at the time in the ambulance. Corpses were placed in the chapel of the cemetery while awaiting burial. The military burial-ground had been established within the precincts of the church, close by the civilian cemetery, and in a few weeks it had invaded it like a cancer and threatened to devour it.

Rashid had thought of everything, and this was why he went in search of Monet and Renaud, Catholic priests and ambulance orderlies of the second class.

The meeting took place at the foot of the great staircase. Leaning over the balustrade, I listened, and watched the colloquy of the rival gods.

Monet was thirty years old; he had fine, sombre eyes, and a stiff beard, from which a pipe emerged. Renaud carried the thin face of a seminarist a little on one side.

Monet and Renaud listened gravely, as became people who were deciding in the Name of the Father. Rashid was pleading for his dead Arab with supple eloquence, wrapped in a cloud of tobacco-smoke:

"We cannot leave the Arab's corpse under a wagon, in the storm. ... This man died for France, at his post.... He had a right to all honours, and it was hard enough as it was that he could not have the obsequies he would surely have had in his own country."

Monet nodded approvingly, and Renaud, his mouth half open, was seeking some formula.

It came, and this was it:

"Very well, Monsieur Rashid, take him into the church; that is God's house for every one."

Rashid bowed with perfect deference, and went back to his dead.

Oh, he arranged everything very well! He had made this funeral a personal matter. He was the family, the master of the ceremonies, almost the priest.

The Algerian's body accordingly lay in the chapel, covered with the old faded flag and a handful of chrysanthemums.

It was here the bearers came to take it, and carry it to CONSECRATED GROUND, to lie among the other comrades.

Monet and Renaud were with us when it was lowered into the grave. Rashid represented the dead man's kindred with much dignity. He held something in his hand which he planted in the ground before going away. It was that crescent of plain deal at the end of a stick which is still to be seen in the midst of the worm-eaten crosses, in the shadow of the belfry of L----.

There the same decay works towards the intermingling and the reconciliation of ancient symbols and ancient dogmas.