The wariness with which we watched the landscape that was watching us seemed to exasperate Marcassin.

He pondered an idea; then came to a sudden decision and cried triumphantly, "Look!" He climbed to the parapet, stood there upright, shook his fist at space with the blind and simple gesture of the apostle who is offering his example and his heart, and shouted, "Death to the Boches!" Then he came down, quivering with the faith of his self-gift.
"Better not do that again," growled the soldiers who were lined up in the trench, gorgonized by the extraordinary sight of a living man standing, for no reason, on a front line parapet in broad daylight, stupefied by the rashness they admired although it outstripped them.
"Why not?
Look!" Marcassin sprang up once more.

Lean and erect, he stood like a poplar, and raising both arms straight into the air, he yelled, "I believe only in the glory of France!" Nothing else was left for him; he was but a conviction.

Hardly had he spoken thus in the teeth of the invisible hurricane when he opened his arms, assumed the shape of a cross against the sky, spun round, and fell noisily into the middle of the trench and of our cries.
He had rolled onto his belly.

We gathered round him.