For this purpose, it is
well to turn from Lintier's pages to those of the honest writers of
whom Dupont is the type, and then back again to Lintier. All evoke,
through intense emotion, most moving and most tragic sensations, but
Lintier, gifted with some inscrutable magic, evokes them in the
atmosphere of beauty.
A quality of the mind of Paul Lintier which marked him out for a place
above his fellows was the prodigious exactitude of his memory. This
was not merely visual, but emotional as well. Not only did it retain,
with the precision of a photograph, all the little fleeting details of
the confused and hurried hours in which the war began, but it kept a
minute record of the oscillation of feeling. Those readers who take a
pleasure in the technical parts of writing may enjoy an analysis of
certain pages in "Ma Piece," for instance, the wonderful description
of an _alerte_ at 2 A.M. above the village of Tailly-sur-Meuse (pp.
131, 132). With the vigorous picturesqueness of these sentences we may
compare the pensive quality and the solidity of touch which combine to
form such a passage as the following account of a watch at Azannes
(August 14, 1914):--"La nuit est claire, rayee par les feux des
projecteurs de Verdun qui font des barres d'or dans le ciel;
merveilleuse nuit de mi-aout, infiniment constellee, egayee d'etoiles
filantes qui laissent apres elles de longues phosphorescences.
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