My hands are bathed in black blood.

On my neck and cheeks, rain, which is also black, bleeds.
The funeral procession of silver-fringed clouds goes by once more, and again a ray of moonlight besilvers the swamp that has sunk us soldiers; it lays winding-sheets on the prone.
All at once a swelling lamentation comes to life, one knows not where, and glides over the plain:-- "Help! Help!" "Now then! _They're_ not coming to look for us! What about it ?" And I see a stirring and movement, very gentle, as at the bottom of the sea.
Amid the glut of noises, upon that still tepid and unsubmissive expanse where cold death sits brooding, that sharp profile has fallen back.
The cloak is quivering.

The great and sumptuous bird of prey is in the act of taking wing.
The horse has not stopped bleeding.

Its blood falls on me drop by drop with the regularity of a clock,--as though all the blood that is filtering through the strata of the field and all the punishment of the wounded came to a head in him and through him.

Ah, it seems that truth goes farther in all directions than one thought! We bend over the wrong that animals suffer, for them we wholly understand.
Men, men! Everywhere the plain has a mangled outline.