"We were very proud of him," said the librarian, "he was of this town. He would have given the town fame throughout the world. His right arm is shot away. And he is so young."
He kept on repeating that while he tied up my etchings.
"He is so young," kept saying the librarian, who is so old.
As I was leaving the antiquity shop in the rue Basse du Château, standing a minute at the door with the antiquary's pretty young wife and the two fat babies, there came along the street four fantassins, two of them limping, one with his arm in a sling, carrying a funeral wreath between them.
It was made of zinc palms and laurels, and the tricolour was laid across it.
The fantassins passed, going up toward the ramparts of the Porte du Midi and the cemetery, carrying their comrade's wreath and the flag.
The antiquary's little young wife was crying.
She said, "I have a letter to-day from my husband. I have a letter every ten days. He also is a fantassin. He is in the Argonne." She threw back her head that the tears might stay back in her eyes, and said, "He was very well when he wrote. He wrote that he was very well, and that I was not to be afraid."
I went to scold the old woman of the fruit shop because she never remembers my apricots.
The fruit shop in the rue des Ramparts is a low stone doorway, hung with scarlet peppers and dried golden corn and yellow gourds, and onions that are of opal and amethyst and pearl; and heaped about with cabbages and lettuce and tomatoes and the few fruits of the season, blackberries and plums and apricots.
The old woman sits in the doorway. She wears the white winged cap and a blue apron and a brown silk fringed shawl and a big gold cross on a gold chain. Her husband was killed in '70. She has no son. Her daughter's three big sons were very kind to her. They are all three of them chasseurs alpins. From one there has been no news since eleven months ago.
She was sitting perfectly still in her place, her hands lying together, hard-worked and tired, on her blue apron. She was looking straight ahead of her and did not see me at all.
I stood and looked at her, and did not speak and saw far-off things, and turned and went away.
The inn, up in the rough stony town of the high mountains, was forlorn enough. There were some dogs and chickens about the door of it, in the wet street.