Jeanne monologue — The Sorrows of Belgium: A Play in Six Scenes

Our soldiers. They were coming from there--where the battle raged for four days. There were not many of them--about a hundred or two hundred. But we all--there were so many people in the streets--we all stepped back to the wall in order to make way for them. Emil, just think of it; how strange! They did not see us, and we would have been in their way! They were black from smoke, from mud, from dried blood, and they were swaying from fatigue. They were all thin--as consumptives. But that is nothing, that is all nothing. Their eyes--what was it, Emil? They did not see their surroundings, they still reflected that which they had seen there--fire and smoke and death--and what else? Some one said: "Here are people returning from hell." We all bowed to them, we bowed to them, but they did not see that either. Is that possible, Emil?