He saw in the garden more corpses in tragic and grotesque
postures. The wounded were doubled over with pain or lying on the ground
or propping themselves against the trees in painful silence. Some had
opened their knapsacks and drawn out their sanitary kits and were trying
to care for their cuts. The infantry was now firing incessantly. The
number of riflemen had increased. New bands of soldiers were entering
the park--some with a sergeant at their head, others followed by an
officer carrying a revolver at his breast as though guiding his men
with it. This must be the infantry expelled from their position near
the river which had come to reinforce the second line of defense. The
mitrailleuses were adding their tac-tac to the cracks of the fusileers.
The hum of the invisible swarms was buzzing incessantly. Thousands of
sticky horse-flies were droning around Desnoyers without his even seeing
them. The bark of the trees was being stripped by unseen hands; the
leaves were falling in torrents; the boughs were shaken by opposing
forces, the stones on the ground were being crushed by a mysterious
foot. All inanimate objects seemed to have acquired a fantastic life.
The zinc spoons of the soldiers, the metallic parts of their outfit, the
pails of the artillery were all clanking as though in an imperceptible
hailstorm. He saw a cannon lying on its side with the wheels broken
and turned over among many men who appeared asleep; he saw soldiers
who stretched themselves out without a contraction, without a sound, as
though overcome by sudden drowsiness.
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