'After these words, and without a change of attitude, he, so to speak, submitted himself passively to a state of silence. I kept him company; and suddenly, but not abruptly¹, as if the appointed time had arrived for his moderate and husky voice to come out of his immobility, he pronounced, "Mon Dieu! how the time passes!" Nothing could have been more commonplace than this remark; but its utterance² coincided for me with a moment of vision. It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant³ thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening⁴ when we see, hear, understand ever so much -- everything -- in a flash -- before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence⁵. I raised my eyes when he spoke⁶, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the clumsy folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motionless pose, so curiously⁷ suggestive of his having been simply left there. Time had passed indeed: it had overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left him hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the iron-grey hair, the heavy fatigue⁸ of the tanned face, two scars, a pair of tarnished⁹ shoulder-straps; one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations, one of those uncounted lives that are buried without drums and trumpets¹⁰ under the foundations of monumental successes. "I am now third

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