The mule makes a jump and I see the moment when our little chasseur is going to be spilled on the ground.
He recovers his balance and, furious, plants himself before the animal.
"_Nom de Dieu_, don't you know _our_ 75's?"
TRAGIC COINCIDENCE, EPARGES. _January_, 1916.
I have spent several days at Berne on vacation. Some hours before my departure I went into a shop to buy a cold luncheon to take on the train.
Near the shop-door two elderly women were talking in a low voice. At the moment I went out, passing close to them, I overheard the word "Eparges." I stopped short.
"Pardon, madame, well have you said 'Eparges'--I come from there and I return! In two days I shall be there and it startled me to hear the name pronounced so far from that spot that I will never forget it!
"Perhaps you know someone there? Tell me, I will go and see him for you----"
"My son, Charles, is at Eparges--his name is Charles Dubois. He is in the 9th Engineers----"
"Under orders from Captain Grenet, my friend; he is a sapper-miner----"
"Yes, Charles is a corporal in his company."
"Upon my arrival at Eparges, I promise you, madame, that I will find your son. He will be very happy when I tell him that I saw his mother at the precise moment she was thinking of him----"
On the road, in the auto, which is taking me to Mesnil-sur-les-Côtes, I think of Charles Dubois, whom I shall easily find at the end of my journey.
I will not go to bed in the shelter, without having seen him--God knows, however, what fatigue the last step will bring----
Alone on foot, I will make the hard trip the length of Longeau, a brook, which was torn up enough in 1914 and the beginning of 1915.
During supper tête à tête with Captain Gunther, who welcomed me heartily on my return, I am haunted by the memory of two old ladies----
"Nothing in particular, except this morning. We had five men buried by a _camouflet_--they began at once to recover the bodies. All were killed----"
"I am going above to-night, with your permission----"
"You must go to bed--you look very tired!"
"I have promised a woman to see her son----"
Some moments later, we began the trip, so laborious at night, almost to the crest of Eparges.
At first the long path--what irony!--the length of which was found the shelters of our sappers and from which came at one time or another, sounds of voices. Then we passed Sap 13, where was heard the purring of the electric generator and the compressor.