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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The New Book Of Martyrs, by Georges Duhamel
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The New Book Of Martyrs
+
+Author: Georges Duhamel
+
+Translator: Florence Simmonds
+
+Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext# 4325]
+Posting Date: January 12, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS
+
+By Georges Duhamel
+
+
+Translated by Florence Simmonds
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     THROUGHOUT OUR LAND
+     THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU
+     MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS
+     THE DEATH OF MERCIER
+     VERDUN
+     THE SACRIFICE
+     THE THIRD SYMPHONY
+     GRACE
+     NIGHTS IN ARTOIS
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS
+
+
+
+
+
+THROUGHOUT OUR LAND
+
+
+From the disfigured regions where the cannon reigns supreme, to the
+mountains of the South, to the ocean, to the glittering shores of the
+inland sea, the cry of wounded men echoes throughout the land, and a
+vast kindred cry seems to rise responsive from the whole world.
+
+There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the
+battle-field are not bleeding. Not one which has not accepted the duty
+of assuaging something of the sum of suffering, just as it bears its
+part in the sum of mourning; not one which may not hear within its own
+walls an echo of the greater lamentation swelling and muttering where
+the conflict seems to rage unceasingly. The waves of war break upon the
+whole surface of the country, and like the incoming tide, strew it with
+wreckage.
+
+In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every side,
+stricken men await the verdict of fate. The beds are white, the bandages
+are spotless; many faces smile until the hour when they are flushed with
+fever, and until that same fever makes a whole nation of wounded tremble
+on the Continent.
+
+Some one who had been visiting the wounded said to me: "The beds are
+really very white, the dressings are clean, all the patients seem to
+be playing cards, reading the papers, eating dainties; they are simple,
+often very gentle, they don't look very unhappy. They all tell the same
+story... The war has not changed them much. One can recognise them all."
+
+Are you sure that you recognise them? You have just been looking at
+them, are you sure that you have seen them?
+
+Under their bandages are wounds you cannot imagine. Below the wounds,
+in the depths of the mutilated flesh, a soul, strange and furtive, is
+stirring in feverish exaltation, a soul which does not readily reveal
+itself, which expresses itself artlessly, but which I would fain make
+you understand.
+
+In these days, when nothing retains its former semblance, all these men
+are no longer those you so lately knew. Suffering has roused them from
+the sleep of gentle life, and every day fills them with a terrible
+intoxication. They are now something more than themselves; those we
+loved were merely happy shadows.
+
+Let us lose none of their humble words, let us note their slightest
+gestures, and tell me, tell me that we will think of them together, now
+and later, when we realise the misery of the times and the magnitude of
+their sacrifice.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU
+
+
+They came in like two parcels dispatched by the same post, two clumsy,
+squalid parcels, badly packed, and damaged in transit. Two human forms
+rolled up in linens and woollens, strapped into strange instruments, one
+of which enclosed the whole man, like a coffin of zinc and wire.
+
+They seemed to be of no particular age; or rather, each might have
+been a thousand and more, the age of swaddled mummies in the depths of
+sarcophagi.
+
+We washed, combed, and peeled them, and laid them very cautiously
+between clean sheets; then we found that one had the look of an old man,
+and that the other was still a boy.
+
+Their beds face each other in the same grey room. All who enter it
+notice them at once; their infinite misery gives them an air of kinship.
+Compared with them, the other wounded seem well and happy. And in this
+abode of suffering, they are kings; their couches are encircled by the
+respect and silence due to majesty.
+
+I approach the younger man and bend over him.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+The answer is a murmur accompanied by an imploring look. What I hear
+sounds like: Mahihehondo. It is a sigh with modulations.
+
+It takes me a week to discover that the boyish patient is called Marie
+Lerondeau.
+
+The bed opposite is less confused. I see a little toothless head. From
+out the ragged beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone, but touching
+and almost melodious. The man who lies there is called Carre.
+
+They did not come from the same battlefield, but they were hit almost at
+the same time, and they have the same wound. Each has a fractured thigh.
+Chance brought them together in the same distant ambulance, where their
+wounds festered side by side. Since then they have kept together, till
+now they lie enfolded by the blue radiance of the Master's gaze.
+
+He looks at both, and shakes his head silently; truly, a bad business!
+He can but ask himself which of the two will die first, so great are the
+odds against the survival of either.
+
+The white-bearded man considers them in silence, turning in his hand the
+cunning knife.
+
+We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul must
+withdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide the flesh,
+and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely.
+
+So the two comrades go to sleep, in that dreadful slumber wherein each
+man resembles his own corpse. Henceforth we enter upon the struggle.
+We have laid our grasp upon these two bodies; we shall not let them be
+snatched from us easily.
+
+The nausea of the awakening, the sharp agony of the first hours are
+over, and I begin to discover my new friends.
+
+This requires time and patience. The dressing hour is propitious. The
+man lies naked on the table. One sees him as a whole, as also those
+great gaping wounds, the objects of so many hopes and fears.
+
+The afternoon is no less favourable to communion, but that is another
+matter. Calm has come to them, and these two creatures have ceased to be
+nothing but a tortured leg and a screaming mouth.
+
+Carre went ahead at once. He made a veritable bound. Whereas Lerondeau
+seemed still wrapped in a kind of plaintive stupor, Carre was already
+enfolding me in a deep affectionate gaze. He said:
+
+"You must do all that is necessary."
+
+Lerondeau can as yet only murmur a half articulate phrase:
+
+"Mustn't hurt me."
+
+As soon as I could distinguish and understand the boy's words, I called
+him by his Christian name. I would say:
+
+"How are you, Marie?" or "I am pleased with you, Marie."
+
+This familiarity suits him, as does my use of "thee" and "thou" in
+talking to him. He very soon guessed that I speak thus only to those who
+suffer most, and for whom I have a special tenderness. So I say to him:
+"Marie, the wound looks very well today." And every one in the hospital
+calls him Marie as I do.
+
+When he is not behaving well, I say:
+
+"Come, be sensible, Lerondeau."
+
+His eyes fill with tears at once. One day I was obliged to try "Monsieur
+Lerondeau," and he was so hurt that I had to retract on the spot.
+However, he now refrains from grumbling at his orderly, and screaming
+too loudly during the dressing of his wound, for he knows that the day
+I say to him "Be quiet, Monsiuer"--just Monsiuer--our relations will be
+exceedingly strained.
+
+From the first, Carre bore himself like a man. When I entered the
+dressing ward, I found the two lying side by side on stretchers which
+had been placed on the floor. Carre's emaciated arm emerged from under
+his blanket, and he began to lecture Marie on the subject of hope and
+courage.... I listened to the quavering voice, I looked at the toothless
+face, lit up by a smile, and I felt a curious choking in my throat,
+while Lerondeau blinked like a child who is being scolded. Then I went
+out of the room, because this was a matter between those two lying on
+the ground, and had nothing to do with me, a robust person, standing on
+my feet.
+
+Since then, Carre has proved that he had a right to preach courage to
+young Lerondeau.
+
+While the dressing is being prepared, he lies on the ground with the
+others, waiting his turn, and says very little. He looks gravely round
+him, and smiles when his eyes meet mine. He is not proud, but he is not
+one of those who are ready to chatter to every one. One does not come
+into this ward to talk, but to suffer, and Carre is bracing himself to
+suffer as decently as possible.
+
+When he is not quite sure of himself, he warns me, saying:
+
+"I am not as strong as usual to-day."
+
+Nine times, out of ten, he is "as strong as usual," but he is so thin,
+so wasted, so reduced by his mighty task, that he is sometimes obliged
+to beat a retreat. He does it with honour, with dignity. He has just
+said: "My knee is terribly painful," and the sentence almost ends in a
+scream. Then, feeling that he is about to howl like the others, Carre
+begins to sing.
+
+The first time this happened I did not quite understand what was going
+on. He repeated the one phrase again and again: "Oh, the pain in my
+knee!" And gradually I became aware that this lament was becoming a
+real melody, and for five long minutes Carre improvised a terrible,
+wonderful, heart-rending song on "the pain in his knee." Since then this
+has become a habit, and he begins to sing suddenly as soon as he feels
+that he can no longer keep silence.
+
+Among his improvisations he will introduce old airs. I prefer not to
+look at his face when he begins: "Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre."
+Indeed, I have a good excuse for not looking at it, for I am very busy
+with his poor leg, which gives me much anxiety, and has to be handled
+with infinite precautions.
+
+I do "all that is necessary," introducing the burning tincture of iodine
+several times. Carre feels the sting; and when, passing by his corner
+an hour later, I listen for a moment, I hear him slowly chanting in
+a trembling but melodious voice the theme: "He gave me tincture of
+iodine."
+
+Carre is proud of showing courage.
+
+This morning he seemed so weak that I tried to be as quick as possible
+and to keep my ears shut. But presently a stranger came into the ward.
+Carre turned his head slightly, saw the visitor, and frowning, began to
+sing:
+
+"Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre."
+
+The stranger looked at him with tears in his eyes but the more he
+looked, the more resolutely Carre smiled, clutching the edges of the
+table with his two quivering hands.
+
+Lerondeau has good strong teeth. Carre has nothing but black stumps.
+This distresses me, for a man with a fractured thigh needs good teeth.
+
+Lerondeau is still at death's door, but though moribund, he can eat. He
+attacks his meat with a well-armed jaw; he bites with animal energy, and
+seems to fasten upon anything substantial.
+
+Carre, for his part, is well-inclined to eat; but what can he do with
+his old stumps?
+
+"Besides," he says, "I was never very carnivorous."
+
+Accordingly, he prefers to smoke. In view of lying perpetually upon
+his back, he arranged the cover of a cardboard box upon his chest;
+the cigarette ash falls into this, and Carre smokes without moving, in
+cleanly fashion.
+
+I look at the ash, the smoke, the yellow, emaciated face, and reflect
+sadly that it is not enough to have the will to live; one must have
+teeth.
+
+Not every one knows how to suffer, and even when we know, we must set
+about it the right way, if we are to come off with honour. As soon as he
+is on the table, Carre looks round him and asks:
+
+"Isn't there any one to squeeze my head to-day?"
+
+If there is no answer, he repeats anxiously:
+
+"Who is going to squeeze my head to-day?"
+
+Then a nurse approaches, takes his head between her hands and
+presses.... I can begin; as soon as some one is "squeezing his head"
+Carre is good.
+
+Lerondeau's method is different. He wants some one to hold his hands.
+When there is no one to do this, he shrieks: "I shall fall."
+
+It is no use to tell him that he is on a solid table, and that he need
+not be afraid. He gropes about for the helpful hands, and cries, the
+sweat breaking out on his brow: "I know I shall fall." Then I get
+some one to come and hold his hands, for suffering, at any rate, is a
+reality....
+
+Each sufferer has his characteristic cry when the dressing is going on.
+The poor have only one, a simple cry that does service for them all. It
+makes one think of the women who, when they are bringing a child into
+the world, repeat, at every pain, the one complaint they have adopted.
+
+Carre has a great many varied cries, and he does not say the same thing
+when the dressing is removed, and when the forceps are applied.
+
+At the supreme moment he exclaims: "Oh, the pain in my knee!"
+
+Then, when the anguish abates, he shakes his head and repeats:
+
+"Oh, that wretched knee!"
+
+When it is the turn of the thigh, he is exasperated.
+
+"Now it's this thigh again!"
+
+And he repeats this incessantly, from second to second. Then we go on to
+the wound under his heel, and Carre begins:
+
+"Well, what is wrong with the poor heel?"
+
+Finally, when he is tired of singing, he murmurs softly and regularly:
+
+"They don't know how that wretched knee hurts me... they don't know how
+it hurts me."
+
+Lerondeau, who is, and always will be, a little boy compared with Carre,
+is very poor in the matter of cries. But when he hears his complaints,
+he checks his own cries, Borrows them. Accordingly, I hear him
+beginning:
+
+"Oh, my poor knee!... They don't know it hurts!"
+
+One morning when he was shouting this at the top of his voice, I asked
+him gravely:
+
+"Why do you make the same complaints as Carre?"
+
+Marie is only a peasant, but he showed me a face that was really
+offended:
+
+"It's not true. I don't say the same things."
+
+I said no more, for there are no souls so rugged that they cannot feel
+certain stings.
+
+Marie has told me the story of his life and of his campaign. As he is
+not very eloquent, It was for the most part a confused murmur with an
+ever-recurring protestation:
+
+"I was a good one to work, you know, strong as a horse."
+
+Yet I can hardly imagine that there was once a Marie Lerondeau who was
+a robust young fellow, standing firm and erect between the handles of a
+plough. I know him only as a man lying on his back, and I even find it
+difficult to picture to myself what his shape and aspect will be when we
+get him on his feet again.
+
+Marie did his duty bravely under fire. "He stayed alone with the wagons
+and when he was wounded, the Germans kicked him with their heavy boots."
+These are the salient points of the interrogatory.
+
+Now and again Lerondeau's babble ceases, and he looks up to the ceiling,
+for this takes the place of distance and horizon to those who lie upon
+their backs. After a long, light silence, he looks at me again, and
+repeats:
+
+"I must have been pretty brave to stay alone with the wagons!"
+
+True enough, Lerondeau was brave, and I take care to let people know it.
+When strangers come in during the dressings, I show them Marie, who is
+making ready to groan, and say:
+
+"This is Marie--Marie Lerondeau, you know. He has a fractured thigh, but
+he is a very brave fellow. He stayed alone with the wagons."
+
+The visitors nod their heads admiringly, and Marie controls himself. He
+blushes a little, and the muscles of his neck swell with pride. He makes
+a sign with his eyes as if to say: "Yes, indeed, alone, all alone with
+the wagons." And meanwhile, the dressing has been nearly finished.
+
+The whole world must know that Marie stayed alone with the wagons. I
+intend to pin a report of this on the Government pension certificate.
+
+Carre was only under fire once, and was hit almost immediately. He is
+much annoyed at this, for he had a good stock of courage, and now he has
+to waste it within the walls of a hospital.
+
+He advanced through a huge beetroot field, and he ran with the others
+towards a fine white mist. All of a sudden, crack, he fell! His thigh
+was fractured. He fell among the thick leaves, on the waterlogged earth.
+
+Shortly afterwards his sergeant passed again, and said to him:
+
+"We are going back to our trench, they shall come and fetch you later."
+
+Carre merely said:
+
+"Put my haversack under my head."
+
+Evening was coming on; he prepared, gravely, to spend the night among
+the beetroots. And there he spent it, alone with a cold drizzling rain,
+meditating seriously until morning.
+
+It was fortunate that Carre brought such a stock of courage into
+hospital, for he needs it all. Successive operations and dressings make
+large drafts upon the most generous supplies.
+
+They put Carre upon the table, and I note an almost joyful resolution in
+his look. To-day he has "all his strength, to the last ounce."
+
+But just to-day, I have but little to do, not much suffering to inflict.
+He has scarcely knitted his brows, when I begin to fasten up the
+apparatus again.
+
+Then Carre's haggard face breaks into a smile, and he exclaims:
+
+"Finished already? Put some more ether on, make it sting a bit at
+least."
+
+Carre knows that the courage of which there was no need to-day will not,
+perhaps, be available to-morrow.
+
+And to-morrow, and for many days after, Carre will have to be constantly
+calling up those reserves of the soul which help the body to suffer
+while it waits for the good offices of Nature.
+
+The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives
+with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do when
+there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?
+
+This leg, infected to the very marrow, seems to be slowly devouring the
+man to whom it belongs; we look at it anxiously, and the white-haired
+Master fixes two small light-blue eyes upon it, eyes accustomed to
+appraise the things of life, yet, for the moment, hesitant.
+
+I speak to Carre in veiled words of the troublesome, gangrenous leg. He
+gives a toothless laugh, and settles the question at once.
+
+"Well, if the wretched thing is a nuisance, we shall have to get rid of
+it."
+
+After this consent, we shall no doubt make up our minds to do so.
+
+Meanwhile Lerondeau is creeping steadily towards healing.
+
+Lying on his back, bound up in bandages and a zinc trough, and
+imprisoned by cushions, he nevertheless looks like a ship which the tide
+will set afloat at dawn.
+
+He is putting on flesh, yet, strange to say, he seems to get lighter
+and lighter. He is learning not to groan, not because his frail soul is
+gaining strength, but because the animal is better fed and more robust.
+
+His ideas of strength of mind are indeed very elementary. As soon as I
+hear his first cry, in the warm room where his wound is dressed, I give
+him an encouraging look, and say:
+
+"Be brave, Marie! Try to be strong!"
+
+Then he knits his brows, makes a grimace, and asks:
+
+"Ought I to say 'By God!'?"
+
+The zinc trough in which Marie's shattered leg has been lying has lost
+its shape; it has become oxydised and is split at the edges; so I have
+decided to change it.
+
+I take it away, look at it, and throw it into a corner. Marie follows my
+movements with a scared glance. While I am adjusting the new trough, a
+solid, comfortable one, but rather different in appearance, he casts
+an eloquent glance at the discarded one, and his eyes fill with copious
+tears.
+
+This change is a small matter; but in the lives of the sick, there are
+no small things.
+
+Lerondeau will weep for the old zinc fragment for two days, and it will
+be a long time before he ceases to look distrustfully at the new trough,
+and to criticise it in those minute and bitter terms which only a
+connoisseur can understand or invent.
+
+Carre, on the other hand, cannot succeed in carrying along his body by
+the generous impulse of his soul. Everything about him save his eyes and
+his liquid voice foreshadow the corpse. Throughout the winter days
+and the long sleepless nights, he looks as if he were dragging along a
+derelict.
+
+He strains at it... with his poignant songs and his brave words which
+falter now, and often die away in a moan.
+
+I had to do his dressing in the presence of Marie. The amount of work to
+be got through, and the cramped quarters made this necessary. Marie was
+grave and attentive as if he were taking a lesson, and, indeed, it was a
+lesson in patience and courage. But all at once, the teacher broke down.
+In the middle of the dressing, Carre opened his lips, and in spite of
+himself, began to complain without restraint or measure, giving up the
+struggle in despair.
+
+Lerondeau listened, anxious and uneasy; and Carre, knowing that Marie
+was listening, continued to lament, like one who has lost all sense of
+shame.
+
+Lerondeau called me by a motion of his eyelids. He said:
+
+"Carre!..."
+
+And he added:
+
+"I saw his slough. Lord! he is bad."
+
+Lerondeau has a good memory for medical terms. Yes, he saw Carre's
+slough. He himself has the like on his posterior and on his heel; but
+the tear that trembles in the corner of his eye is certainly for Carre.
+
+And then, he knows, he feels that HIS wounds are going to heal.
+
+But it is bad for Marie to hear another complaining before his own turn.
+
+He comes to the table very ill-disposed. His nerves have been shaken and
+are unusually irritable.
+
+At the first movement, he begins with sighs and those "Poor devils!"
+which are his artless and habitual expressions of self-pity. And then,
+all at once, he begins to scream, as I had not heard him scream for a
+long time. He screams in a sort of frenzy, opening his mouth widely, and
+shrieking with all the strength of his lungs, and with all the strength
+of his face, it would seem, for it is flushed and bathed in sweat.
+He screams unreasonably at the lightest touch, in an incoherent and
+disorderly fashion.
+
+Then, ceasing to exhort him to be calm with gentle and compassionate
+words, I raise my voice suddenly and order the boy to be quiet, in a
+severe tone that admits of no parleying...
+
+Marie's agitation subsides at once, like a bubble at the touch of a
+finger. The ward still rings with my imperious order. A good lady who
+does not understand at once, stares at me in stupefaction.
+
+But Marie, red and frightened, controls his unreasonable emotion. And as
+long as the dressing lasts, I dominate his soul strenuously to prevent
+him from suffering in vain, just as others hold and grasp his wrists.
+
+Then, presently, it is all over. I give him a fraternal smile that
+relaxes the tension of his brow as a bow is unbent.
+
+A lady, who is a duchess at the least, came to visit the wounded. She
+exhaled such a strong, sweet perfume that she cannot have distinguished
+the odour of suffering that pervades this place.
+
+Carre was shown to her as one of the most interesting specimens of the
+house. She looked at him with a curious, faded smile, which, thanks to
+paint and powder, still had a certain beauty.
+
+She made some patriotic remarks to Carre full of allusions to his
+conduct under fire. And Carre ceased staring out of the window to look
+at the lady with eyes full of respectful astonishment.
+
+And then she asked Carre what she could send him that he would like,
+with a gesture that seemed to offer the kingdoms of the earth and the
+glory of them.
+
+Carre, in return, gave her a radiant smile; he considered for a moment
+and then said modestly:
+
+"A little bit of veal with new potatoes."
+
+The handsome lady thought it tactful to laugh. And I felt instinctively
+that her interest in Carre was suddenly quenched.
+
+An old man sometimes comes to visit Carre. He stops before the bed, and
+with a stony face pronounces words full of an overflowing benevolence.
+
+"Give him anything he asks for.... Send a telegram to his family."
+
+Carre protests timidly: "Why a telegram? I have no one but my poor old
+mother; it would frighten her."
+
+The little old gentleman emerges from his varnished boots like a
+variegated plant from a double vase.
+
+Carre coughs--first, to keep himself in countenance, and, secondly,
+because his cruel bronchitis takes this opportunity to give him a
+shaking.
+
+Then the old gentleman stoops, and all his medals hang out from his
+tunic like little dried-up breasts. He bends down, puffing and pouting,
+without removing his gold-trimmed KEPI, and lays a deaf ear on Carre's
+chest with an air of authority.
+
+Carre's leg has been sacrificed. The whole limb has gone, leaving a huge
+and dreadful wound level with the trunk.
+
+It is very surprising that the rest of Carre did not go with the leg.
+
+He had a pretty hard day.
+
+O life! O soul! How you cling to this battered carcase! O little gleam
+on the surface of the eye! Twenty times I saw it die down and kindle
+again. And it seemed too suffering, too weak, too despairing ever to
+reflect anything again save suffering, weakness, and despair.
+
+During the long afternoon, I go and sit between two beds beside
+Lerondeau. I offer him cigarettes, and we talk. This means that we say
+nothing, or very little.... But it is not necessary to speak when one
+has a talk with Lerondeau.
+
+Marie is very fond of cigarettes, but what he likes still better is that
+I should come and sit by him for a bit. When I pass through the ward,
+he taps coaxingly upon his sheet, as one taps upon a bench to invite a
+friend to a seat.
+
+Since he told me about his life at home and his campaign, he has not
+found much to say to me. He takes the cakes with which his little shelf
+is laden, and crunches them with an air of enjoyment.
+
+"As for me," he says, "I just eat all the time," and he laughs.
+
+If he stops eating to smoke, he laughs again. Then there is an agreeable
+silence. Marie looks at me, and begins to laugh again. And when I get
+up to go, he says: "Oh, you are not in such a great hurry, we can chat a
+little longer!"
+
+Lerondeau's leg was such a bad business that it is now permanently
+shorter than the other by a good twelve centimetres. So at least it
+seems to us, looking down on it from above.
+
+But Lerondeau, who has only seen it from afar by raising his head a
+little above the table while his wounds are being dressed, has noticed
+only a very slight difference in length between his two legs.
+
+He said philosophically:
+
+"It is shorter, but with a good thick sole...."
+
+When Marie was better, he raised himself on his elbow, and he understood
+the extent of his injury more clearly.
+
+"I shall want a VERY thick sole," he remarked.
+
+Now that Lerondeau can sit up, he, too, can estimate the extent of the
+damage from above; but he is happy to feel life welling up once more in
+him, and he concludes gaily:
+
+"What I shall want is not a sole, but a little bench."
+
+But Carre is ill, terribly ill.
+
+That valiant soul of his seems destined to be left alone, for all else
+is failing.
+
+He had one sound leg. Now it is stiff and swollen.
+
+He had healthy, vigorous arms. Now one of them is covered with
+abscesses.
+
+The joy of breathing no longer exists for Carre, for his cough shakes
+him savagely in his bed.
+
+The back, by means of which we rest, has also betrayed him. Here and
+there it is ulcerated; for man was not meant to lie perpetually on his
+back, but only to lie and sleep on it after a day of toil.
+
+For man was not really intended to suffer with his miserable, faithless
+body!
+
+And his heart beats laboriously.
+
+There was mischief in the bowel too. So much so, that one day Carre was
+unable to control himself, before a good many people who had come in.
+
+In spite of our care, in spite of our friendly assurances, Carre was so
+ashamed that he wept. He who always said that a man ought not to cry, he
+who never shed a tear in the most atrocious suffering, sobbed with shame
+on account of this accident. And I could not console him.
+
+He no longer listens to all we say to him. He no longer answers our
+questions. He has mysterious fits of absence.
+
+He who was so dignified in his language, expresses himself and complains
+with the words of a child.
+
+Sometimes he comes up out of the depths and speaks.
+
+He talks of death with an imaginative lucidity which sounds like actual
+experience.
+
+Sometimes he sees it... And as he gazes, his pupils suddenly distend.
+
+But he will not, he cannot make up his mind....
+
+He wants to suffer a little longer.
+
+I draw near to his bed in the gathering darkness. His breathing is so
+light that suddenly, I stop and listen open-mouthed, full of anxiety.
+
+Then Carre suddenly opens his eyes.
+
+Will he sigh and groan? No. He smiles and says:
+
+"What white teeth you have!"
+
+Then he dreams, as if he were dying.
+
+Could you have imagined such a martyrdom, my brother, when you were
+driving the plough into your little plot of brown earth?
+
+Here you are, enduring a death-agony of five months swathed in these
+livid wrappings, without even the rewards that are given to others.
+
+Your breast, your shroud must be bare of even the humblest of the
+rewards of valour, Carre.
+
+It was written that you should suffer without purpose and without hope.
+
+But I will not let all your sufferings be lost in the abyss. And so I
+record them thus at length.
+
+Lerondeau has been brought down into the garden. I find him there,
+stretched out on a cane chair, with a little kepi pulled down over his
+eyes, to shade them from the first spring sunshine.
+
+He talks a little, smokes a good deal, and laughs more.
+
+I look at his leg, but he hardly ever looks at it himself; he no longer
+feels it.
+
+He will forget it even more utterly after a while, and he will live
+as if it were natural enough for a man to live with a stiff, distorted
+limb.
+
+Forget your leg, forget your sufferings, Lerondeau. But the world must
+not forget them.
+
+And I leave Marie sitting in the sun, with a fine new pink colour in his
+freckled cheeks.
+
+Carre died early this morning. Lerondeau leaves us to-morrow.
+
+
+
+
+
+MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS
+
+
+I
+
+
+Were modesty banished from the rest of the earth, it would no doubt find
+a refuge in Mouchon's heart.
+
+I see him still as he arrived, on a stretcher full of little pebbles,
+with his mud be-plastered coat, and his handsome, honest face, like that
+of a well-behaved child.
+
+"You must excuse me," he said; "we can't keep ourselves very clean."
+
+"Have you any lice?" asks the orderly, as he undresses him.
+
+Mouchon flushes and looks uneasy.
+
+"Well, if I have, they don't really belong to me."
+
+He has none, but he has a broken leg, "due to a torpedo."
+
+The orderly cuts open his trouser, and I tell him to take off the boot.
+Mouchon puts out his hand, and says diffidently:
+
+"Never mind the boot."
+
+"But, my good fellow, we can't dress your leg without taking off your
+boot."
+
+Then Mouchon, red and confused, objects:
+
+"But if you take off the boot, I'm afraid my foot will smell...."
+
+I have often thought of this answer. And believe me, Mouchon, I have not
+yet met the prince who is worthy to take off your boots and wash your
+humble feet.
+
+
+II
+
+
+With his forceps the doctor lays hold carefully of a mass of bloody
+dressings, and draws them gently out of a gaping wound in the abdomen. A
+ray of sunshine lights him at his work, and the whole of the frail shed
+trembles to the roar of the cannon.
+
+"I am a big china-dealer," murmurs the patient. "You come from Paris,
+and I do, too. Save me, and you shall see.... I'll give you a fine piece
+of china."
+
+The plugs are coming out by degrees; the forceps glitter, and the ray
+of sunshine seems to tremble under the cannonade, as do the floor, the
+walls, the light roof, the whole earth, the whole universe, drunk with
+fatigue.
+
+Suddenly, from the depths of space, a whining sound arises, swells,
+rends the air above the shed, and the shell bursts a few yards off, with
+the sound of a cracked object breaking.
+
+The thin walls seem to quiver under the pressure of the air. The doctor
+makes a slight movement of his head, as if to see, after all, where the
+thing fell.
+
+Then the china-dealer, who noted the movement, says in a quiet voice:
+
+"Don't take any notice of those small things, they don't do any
+harm. Only save me, and I will give you a beautiful piece of china or
+earthenware, whichever you like."
+
+
+III
+
+
+The root of the evil is not so much the shattered leg, as the little
+wound in the arm, from which so much good blood was lost.
+
+With his livid lips, no longer distinguishable from the rest of
+his face, and the immense black pupils of his eyes, the man shows a
+countenance irradiated by a steadfast soul, which will not give in
+till the last moment. He contemplates the ravages of his body almost
+severely, and without illusion, and watching the surgeons as they scrub
+their hands, he says in a grave voice:
+
+"Tell my wife that my last thoughts were of her and our children."
+
+Ah! it was not a veiled question, for, without a moment's hesitation, he
+allows us to put the mask over his face.
+
+The solemn words seem still to echo through the ward:
+
+"Tell my wife..."
+
+That manly face is not the face of one who could be deceived by soft
+words and consoling phrases. The white blouse turns away. The surgeon's
+eyes grow dim behind his spectacles, and in solemn tones he replies:
+
+"We will not fail to do so, friend."
+
+The patient's eyelids flutter--as one waves a handkerchief from the deck
+of a departing steamer--then, breathing in the ether steadily, he falls
+into a dark slumber.
+
+He never wakes, and we keep our promise to him.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+A few days before the death of Tricot, a very annoying thing happened to
+him; a small excrescence, a kind of pimple, appeared on the side of his
+nose.
+
+Tricot had suffered greatly; only some fragments of his hands remained;
+but, above all, he had a great opening in his side, a kind of fetid
+mouth, through which the will to live seemed to evaporate.
+
+Coughing, spitting, looking about with wide, agonised eyes in search of
+elusive breath, having no hands to scratch oneself with, being unable to
+eat unaided, and further, never having the smallest desire to eat--could
+this be called living? And yet Tricot never gave in. He waged his own
+war with the divine patience of a man who had waged the great world war,
+and who knows that victory will not come right away.
+
+But Tricot had neither allies nor reserves; he was all alone, so wasted
+and so exhausted that the day came when he passed almost imperceptibly
+from the state of a wounded to that of a dying man.
+
+And it was just at this moment that the pimple appeared.
+
+Tricot had borne the greatest sufferings courageously; but he seemed to
+have no strength to bear this slight addition to his woes.
+
+"Monsieur," stammered the orderly who had charge of him, utterly
+dejected, "I tell you, that pimple is the spark that makes the cup
+overflow."
+
+And in truth the cup overflowed. This misfortune was too much. Tricot
+began to complain, and from that moment I felt that he was doomed.
+
+I asked him several times a day, thinking of all his wounds: "How are
+you, old fellow?" And he, thinking of nothing but the pimple, answered
+always:
+
+"Very bad, very bad! The pimple is getting bigger."
+
+It was true. The pimple had come to a head, and I wanted to prick it.
+
+Tricot, who had allowed us to cut into his chest without an anaesthetic,
+exclaimed with tears:
+
+"No, no more operations! I won't have any more operations."
+
+All day long he lamented about his pimple, and the following night he
+died.
+
+"It was a bad pimple," said the orderly; "it was that which killed him."
+
+Alas! It was not a very "bad pimple," but no doubt it killed him.
+
+
+V
+
+
+Mehay was nearly killed, but he did not die; so no great harm was done.
+
+The bullet went through his helmet, and only touched the bone. The brain
+is all right. So much the better.
+
+No sooner had Mehay come to, and hiccoughed a little in memory of the
+chloroform, than he began to look round with interest at all that was
+happening about him.
+
+Three days after the operation, Mehay got up. It would have been useless
+to forbid this proceeding. Mehay would have disobeyed orders for the
+first time in his life. We could not even think of taking away his
+clothes. The brave man never lacks clothes.
+
+Mehay accordingly got up, and his illness was a thing of the past.
+
+Every morning, Mehay rises before day-break and seizes a broom. Rapidly
+and thoroughly, he makes the ward as dean as his own heart. He never
+forgets any corner, and he manages to pass the brush gently under the
+beds without waking his sleeping comrades, and without disturbing those
+who are in pain. Sometimes Mehay hands basins or towels, and he is as
+gentle as a woman when he helps to dress Vossaert, whose limbs are numb
+and painful.
+
+At eight o'clock, the ward is in perfect order, and as the dressings are
+about to begin, Mehay suddenly appears in a fine clean apron. He watches
+my hands carefully as they come and go, and he is always in the right
+place to hand the dressing to the forceps, to pour out the spirit, or
+to lend a hand with a bandage, for he very soon learned to bandage
+skilfully.
+
+He does not say a word; he just looks. The bit of his forehead that
+shows under his own bandages is wrinkled with the earnestness of his
+attention--and he has those blue marks by which we recognise the miner.
+
+Sometimes it is his turn to have a dressing. But scarcely is it
+completed when he is up again with his apron before him, silently busy.
+
+At eleven o'clock, Mehay disappears. He has gone, perhaps, to get a
+breath of fresh air? Oh, no! Here he is back again with a trayful of
+bowls. And he hands round the soup.
+
+In the evening he hands the thermometer. He helps the orderlies so much
+that he leaves them very little to do.
+
+All this time the bones of his skull are at work under his bandages, and
+the red flesh is growing. But we are not to trouble about that: it will
+manage all alone. The man, however, cannot be idle. He works, and trusts
+to his blood, "which is healthy."
+
+In the evening, when the ward is lighted by a night-light, and I come
+in on tiptoe to give a last look round, I hear a voice laboriously
+spelling: "B-O, Bo; B-I, Bi; N-E, Ne, Bobine." It is Mehay, learning to
+read before going to bed.
+
+
+VI
+
+
+A lamp has been left alight, because the men are not asleep yet, and
+they are allowed to smoke for a while. It would be no fun to smoke,
+unless one could see the smoke.
+
+The former bedroom of the mistress of the house makes a very light,
+very clean ward. Under the draperies which have been fastened up to the
+ceiling and covered with sheets, old Louarn lies motionless, waiting for
+his three shattered limbs to mend. He is smoking a cigarette, the ash
+from which falls upon his breast. Apologising for the little heaps of
+dirt that make his bed the despair of the orderlies, he says to me:
+
+"You know, a Breton ought to be a bit dirty."
+
+I touch the weight attached to his thigh, and he exclaims:
+
+"Ma doue! Ma doue! Caste! Caste!"
+
+These are oaths of a kind, of his own coining, which make every one
+laugh, and himself the first. He adds, as he does every day:
+
+"Doctor, you never hurt me so much before as you have done this time."
+
+Then he laughs again.
+
+Lens is not asleep yet, but he is as silent as usual. He has scarcely
+uttered twenty words in three weeks.
+
+In a corner, Mehay patiently repeats: "P-A, Pa," and the orderly who is
+teaching him to read presses his forefinger on the soiled page.
+
+I make my way towards Croin, Octave. I sit down by the bed in silence.
+
+Croin turns a face half hidden by bandages to me, and puts a leg damp
+with sweat out from under the blankets, for fever runs high just at this
+time. He too, is silent; he knows as well as I do that he is not going
+on well; but all the same, he hopes I shall go away without speaking to
+him.
+
+No. I must tell him. I bend over him and murmur certain things.
+
+He listens, and his chin begins to tremble, his boyish chin, which is
+covered with a soft, fair down.
+
+Then, with the accent of his province, he says in a tearful, hesitating
+voice:
+
+"I have already given an eye, must I give a hand too?"
+
+His one remaining eye fills with tears. And seeing the sound hand, I
+press it gently before I go.
+
+
+VII
+
+
+When I put my fingers near his injured eye, Croin recoils a little.
+
+"Don't be afraid," I say to him.
+
+"Oh, I'm not afraid!"
+
+And he adds proudly:
+
+"When a chap has lived on Hill 108, he can't ever be afraid of anything
+again."
+
+"Then why do you wince?"
+
+"It's just my head moving back of its own accord. I never think of it."
+
+And it is true; the man is not afraid, but his flesh recoils.
+
+When the bandage is properly adjusted, what remains visible of Groin's
+face is young, agreeable, charming. I note this with satisfaction, and
+say to him:
+
+"There's not much damage done on this side. We'll patch you up so well
+that you will still be able to make conquests."
+
+He smiles, touches his bandage, looks at his mutilated arm, seems to
+lose himself for a while in memories, and murmurs:
+
+"May be. But the girls will never come after me again as they used
+to..."
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+"The skin is beginning to form over the new flesh. A few weeks more, and
+then a wooden leg. You will run along like a rabbit."
+
+Plaquet essays a little dry laugh which means neither yes nor no, but
+which reveals a great timidity, and something else, a great anxiety.
+
+"For Sundays, you can have an artificial leg. You put a boot on it. The
+trouser hides it all. It won't show a bit."
+
+The wounded man shakes his head slightly, and listens with a gentle,
+incredulous smile.
+
+"With an artificial leg, Plaquet, you will, of course, be able to go
+out. It will be almost as it was before."
+
+Plaquet shakes his head again, and says in a low voice:
+
+"Oh, I shall never go out!"
+
+"But with a good artificial leg, Plaquet, you will be able to walk
+almost as well as before. Why shouldn't you go out?"
+
+Plaquet hesitates and remains silent.
+
+"Why?"
+
+Then in an almost inaudible voice he replies:
+
+"I will never go out. I should be ashamed."
+
+Plaquet will wear a medal on his breast. He is a brave soldier, and by
+no means a fool. But there are very complex feelings which we must not
+judge too hastily.
+
+
+IX
+
+
+In the corner of the ward there is a little plank bed which is like all
+the other little beds. But buried between its sheets there is the smile
+of Mathouillet, which is like no other smile.
+
+Mathouillet, after throwing a good many bombs, at last got one himself.
+In this disastrous adventure, he lost part of his thigh, received
+several wounds, and gradually became deaf. Such is the fate of
+bombardier-grenadier Mathouillet.
+
+The bombardier-grenadier has a gentle, beardless face, which for many
+weeks must have expressed great suffering, and, which is now beginning
+to show a little satisfaction.
+
+But Mathouillet hears so badly that when one speaks to him he only
+smiles in answer.
+
+If I come into the ward, Mathouillet's smile awaits and welcomes me.
+When the dressing is over, Mathouillet thanks me with a smile. If I
+look at the temperature chart, Mathouillet's smile follows me, but not
+questioningly; Mathouillet has faith in me, but his smile says a
+number of unspoken things that I understand perfectly. Conversation
+is difficult, on account of this unfortunate deafness--that is to say,
+conversation as usually carried on. But we two, happily, have no need of
+words. For some time past, certain smiles have been enough for us. And
+Mathouillet smiles, not only with his eyes or with his lips, but with
+his nose, his beardless chin, his broad, smooth forehead, crowned by the
+pale hair of the North, with all his gentle, boyish face.
+
+Now that Mathouillet can get up, he eats at the table, with his
+comrades. To call him to meals, Baraffe utters a piercing cry, which
+reaches the ear of the bombardier-grenadier.
+
+He arrives, shuffling his slippers along the floor, and examines all the
+laughing faces. As he cannot hear, he hesitates to sit down, and this
+time his smile betrays embarrassment and confusion.
+
+Coming very close to him, I say loudly:
+
+"Your comrades are calling you to dinner, my boy."
+
+"Yes, yes," he replies, "but because they know I am deaf, they sometimes
+try to play tricks on me."
+
+His cheeks flush warmly as he makes this impromptu confidence. Then
+he makes up his mind to sit down, after interrogating me with his most
+affectionate smile.
+
+
+X
+
+
+Once upon a time, Paga would have been called un type; now he is un
+numero. This means that he is an original, that his ways of considering
+and practising life are unusual; and as life here is reduced entirely to
+terms of suffering, it means that his manner of suffering differs from
+that of other people.
+
+From the very beginning, during those hard moments when the wounded
+man lies plunged in stupor and self-forgetfulness, Paga distinguished
+himself by some remarkable eccentricities.
+
+Left leg broken, right foot injured, such was the report on Paga's
+hospital sheet.
+
+Now the leg was not doing at all well. Every morning, the good head
+doctor stared at the swollen flesh with his little round discoloured
+eyes and said: "Come, we must just wait till to-morrow." But Paga did
+not want to wait.
+
+Flushed with fever, his hands trembling, his southern accent exaggerated
+by approaching delirium, he said, as soon as we came to see him.
+
+"My wish, my wish! You know my wish, doctor."
+
+Then, lower, with a kind of passion:
+
+"I want you to cut it off, you know. I want you to cut this leg. Oh! I
+shan't be happy till it is done. Doctor, cut it, cut it off."
+
+We didn't cut it at all, and Paga's business was very successfully
+arranged. I even feel sure that this leg became quite a respectable limb
+again.
+
+I am bound to say Paga understood that he had meddled with things which
+did not concern him. He nevertheless continued to offer imperative
+advice as to the manner in which he wished to be nursed.
+
+"Don't pull off the dressings! I won't have it. Do you hear, doctor?
+Don't pull. I won't have it."
+
+Then he would begin to tremble nervously all over his body and to say:
+
+"I am quite calm! Oh, I am really calm. See, Michelet, see, Brugneau, I
+am calm. Doctor, see, I am quite calm."
+
+Meantime the dressings were gradually loosening under a trickle of
+water, and Paga muttered between his teeth:
+
+"He's pulling, he's pulling.... Oh, the cruel man! I won't have it, I
+won't have it."
+
+Then suddenly, with flaming cheeks:
+
+"That's right. That's right! See, Michelet, see, Brugneau: the dressings
+have come away. Sergeant, Sergeant, the dressings are loosened."
+
+He clapped his hands, possessed by a furtive joy; then he suddenly
+became conscious, and with a deep furrow between his brows, he began to
+give orders again.
+
+"Not any tincture of iodine to-day, doctor. Take away those forceps,
+doctor, take them away."
+
+Meanwhile the implacable forceps did their work, the tincture of iodine
+performed its chilly function; then Paga yelled:
+
+"Quickly, quickly. Kiss me, kiss me."
+
+With his arms thrown out like tentacles, he beat upon the air, and
+seized haphazard upon the first blouse that passed. Then he would
+embrace it frantically.
+
+Thus it happened that he once showered kisses on Michelet's hands,
+objects by no means suitable for such a demonstration. Michelet said,
+laughing:
+
+"Come, stop it; my hands are dirty."
+
+And then poor Paga began to kiss Michelet's bare, hairy arms, saying
+distractedly:
+
+"If your hands are dirty, your arms are all right."
+
+Alas, what has become of all those who, during days and nights of
+patient labour, I saw gradually shaking off the dark empire of the night
+and coming back again to joy? What has become of the smouldering faggot
+which an ardent breath finally kindled into flame?
+
+What became of you, precious lives, poor wonderful souls, for whom I
+fought so many obscure great battles, and who went off again into the
+realm of adventure?
+
+You, Paga, little fellow, where are you? Do you remember the time when I
+used to dress your two wounds alternately, and when you said to me with
+great severity:
+
+"The leg to-day, only the leg. It's not the day for the foot."
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Sergeant Lecolle is distinguished by a huge black beard, which fails to
+give a ferocious expression to the gentlest face in the world.
+
+He arrived the day little Delporte died, and scarcely had he emerged
+from the dark sleep when, opening his eyes, he saw Delporte die.
+
+I went to speak to him several times. He looked so exhausted, his black
+beard was so mournful that I kept on telling him: "Sergeant, your wound
+is not serious."
+
+Each time he shook his head as if to say that he took but little
+interest in the matter, and tried to close his eyes.
+
+Lecolle is too nervous; he was not able to close his eyes, and he saw
+Delporte dead, and he had been obliged to witness all Delporte's death
+agony; for when one has a wound in the right shoulder, one can only lie
+upon the left shoulder.
+
+The ward was full, I could not change the sergeant's place, and yet I
+should have liked to let him be alone all day with his own pain.
+
+Now Lecolle is better; he feels better without much exuberance, with a
+seriousness which knows and foresees the bufferings of Fate.
+
+Lecolle was a stenographer "in life." We are no longer "in life,"
+but the good stenographer retains his principles. When his wounds are
+dressed, he looks carefully at the little watch on his wrist. He moans
+at intervals, and stops suddenly to say:
+
+"It has taken fifty seconds to-day to loosen the dressings. Yesterday,
+you took sixty-two seconds."
+
+His first words after the operation were:
+
+"Will you please tell me how many minutes I was unconscious?"
+
+
+XII
+
+
+I first saw Derancourt in the room adjoining the chapel. A band of
+crippled men, returning from Germany after a long captivity, had just
+been brought in there.
+
+There were some fifty of them, all looking with delighted eyes at
+the walls, the benches, the telephone, all the modest objects in this
+waiting-room, objects which are so much more attractive under the light
+of France than in harsh exile.
+
+The waiting-room seemed to have been transformed into a museum of
+misery: there were blind men, legless and armless men, paralysed men,
+their faces ravaged by fire and powder.
+
+A big fellow said, lifting his deformed arm with an effort:
+
+"I tricked them; they thought to the end that I was really paralysed.
+I look well, but that's because they sent us to Constance for the last
+week, to fatten us up."
+
+A dark, thin man was walking to and fro, towing his useless foot after
+him by the help of a string which ran down his trouser leg; and he
+laughed:
+
+"I walk more with my fist than with my foot. Gentlemen, gentlemen, who
+would like to pull Punch's string?"
+
+All wore strange costumes, made up of military clothing and patched
+civilian garments.
+
+On a bench sat fifteen or twenty men with about a dozen legs between
+them. It was among these that I saw Derancourt. He was holding his
+crutches in one hand and looking round him, stroking his long fair
+moustache absently.
+
+Derancourt became my friend.
+
+His leg had been cut off at the thigh, and this had not yet healed; he
+had, further, a number of other wounds which had closed more or less
+during his captivity.
+
+Derancourt never talked of himself, much less of his misfortune. I knew
+from his comrades that he had fought near Longwy, his native town, and
+that he had lain grievously wounded for nine days on the battlefield.
+He had seen his father, who had come to succour him, killed at his side;
+then he had lain beside the corpse, tortured by a delirious dream in
+which nine days and nine nights had followed one upon the other, like a
+dizziness of alternate darkness and dazzling light. In the mornings, he
+sucked the wet grass he clutched when he stretched out his hands.
+
+Afterwards he had suffered in Germany, and finally he had come back to
+France, mutilated, covered with wounds, and knowing that his wife and
+children were left without help and without resources in the invaded
+territory.
+
+Of all this Derancourt said not a word. He apparently did not know how
+to complain, and he contemplated the surrounding wretchedness with a
+grave look, full of experience, which would have seemed a little cold
+but for the tremulous mobility of his features.
+
+Derancourt never played, never laughed. He sought solitude, and spent
+hours, turning his head slowly from side to side, contemplating the
+walls and the ceiling like one who sees things within himself.
+
+The day came when we had to operate on Derancourt, to make his stump of
+a thigh serviceable.
+
+He was laid on the table. He remained calm and self-controlled as
+always, looking at the preparations for the operation with a kind of
+indifference.
+
+We put the chloroform pad under his nose; he drew two or three deep
+breaths, and then a strange thing happened: Derancourt began to sob in a
+terrible manner, and to talk of all those things he had never mentioned.
+The grief he had suppressed for months overflowed, or rather, rushed out
+in desperate, heartrending lamentations.
+
+It was not the disorderly intoxication, the muscular, animal rebellion
+of those who are thrown into this artificial sleep. It was the sudden
+break-up of an overstrained will under a slight shock. For months
+Derancourt had braced himself against despair, and now, all of a sudden,
+he gave way, and abandoned himself to poignant words and tears. The
+flood withdrew suddenly, leaving the horrible, chaotic depths beneath
+the sea visible.
+
+We ceased scrubbing our hands, and stood aghast and deeply moved, full
+of sadness and respect.
+
+Then some one exclaimed:
+
+"Quick! quick! More chloroform! Stupefy him outright, let him sleep."
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+"But a man can't be paralysed by a little hole in his back! I tell you
+it was only a bullet. You must take it out, doctor. Take it out, and I
+shall be all right."
+
+Thus said a Zouave, who had been lying helpless for three days on his
+bed.
+
+"If you knew how strong I am! Look at my arms! No one could unhook a bag
+like me, and heave it over my shoulder--tock! A hundred kilos--with one
+jerk!"
+
+The doctor looked at the muscular torso, and his face expressed pity,
+regret, embarrassment, and, perhaps, a certain wish to go away.
+
+"But this wretched bullet prevents me from moving my legs. You must take
+it out, doctor, you must take it out!"
+
+The doctor glances at the paralysed legs, and the swollen belly, already
+lifeless. He knows that the bullet broke the spine, and cut through the
+marrow which sent law and order into all this now inanimate flesh.
+
+"Operate, doctor. Look you, a healthy chap like me would soon get well."
+
+The doctor stammers vague sentences: the operation would be too serious
+for the present... better wait....
+
+"No, no. Never fear. My health is first-rate. Don't be afraid, the
+operation is bound to be a success."
+
+His rugged face is contracted by his fixed idea. His voice softens;
+blind confidence and supplication give it an unusual tone. His heavy
+eyebrows meet and mingle under the stress of his indomitable will; his
+soul makes such an effort that the immobility of his legs seems suddenly
+intolerable. Heavens! Can a man WILL so intensely, and yet be powerless
+to control his own body?
+
+"Oh, operate, operate! You will see how pleased I shall be!"
+
+The doctor twists the sheet round his forefinger; then, hearing a
+wounded man groaning in the next ward, he gets up, says he will come
+back presently, and escapes.
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+The colloquy between the rival gods took place at the foot of the great
+staircase.
+
+The Arab soldier had just died. It was the Arab one used to see under
+a shed, seated gravely on the ground in the midst of other magnificent
+Arabs. In those days they had boots of crimson leather, and majestic red
+mantles. They used to sit in a circle, contemplating from under their
+turbans the vast expanse of mud watered by the skies of Artois. To-day,
+they wear the ochre helmet, and show the profiles of Saracen warriors.
+
+The Algerian has just been killed, kicked in the belly by his beautiful
+white horse.
+
+In the ambulance there was a Mussulman orderly, a well-to-do tradesman,
+who had volunteered for the work. He, on the other hand, was extremely
+European, nay, Parisian; but a plump, malicious smile showed itself
+in the midst of his crisp grey beard, and he had the look in the eyes
+peculiar to those who come from the other side of the Mediterranean.
+
+Rashid "behaved very well." He had found native words when tending the
+dying man, and had lavished on him the consolations necessary to those
+of his country.
+
+When the Algerian was dead, he arranged the winding-sheet himself, in
+his own fashion; then he lighted a cigarette, and set out in search of
+Monet and Renaud.
+
+For lack of space, we had no mortuary at the time in the ambulance.
+Corpses were placed in the chapel of the cemetery while awaiting burial.
+The military burial-ground had been established within the precincts of
+the church, close by the civilian cemetery, and in a few weeks it had
+invaded it like a cancer and threatened to devour it.
+
+Rashid had thought of everything, and this was why he went in search of
+Monet and Renaud, Catholic priests and ambulance orderlies of the second
+class.
+
+The meeting took place at the foot of the great staircase. Leaning over
+the balustrade, I listened, and watched the colloquy of the rival gods.
+
+Monet was thirty years old; he had fine, sombre eyes, and a stiff beard,
+from which a pipe emerged. Renaud carried the thin face of a seminarist
+a little on one side.
+
+Monet and Renaud listened gravely, as became people who were deciding
+in the Name of the Father. Rashid was pleading for his dead Arab with
+supple eloquence, wrapped in a cloud of tobacco-smoke:
+
+"We cannot leave the Arab's corpse under a wagon, in the storm. ... This
+man died for France, at his post.... He had a right to all honours, and
+it was hard enough as it was that he could not have the obsequies he
+would surely have had in his own country."
+
+Monet nodded approvingly, and Renaud, his mouth half open, was seeking
+some formula.
+
+It came, and this was it:
+
+"Very well, Monsieur Rashid, take him into the church; that is God's
+house for every one."
+
+Rashid bowed with perfect deference, and went back to his dead.
+
+Oh, he arranged everything very well! He had made this funeral a
+personal matter. He was the family, the master of the ceremonies, almost
+the priest.
+
+The Algerian's body accordingly lay in the chapel, covered with the old
+faded flag and a handful of chrysanthemums.
+
+It was here the bearers came to take it, and carry it to CONSECRATED
+GROUND, to lie among the other comrades.
+
+Monet and Renaud were with us when it was lowered into the grave. Rashid
+represented the dead man's kindred with much dignity. He held something
+in his hand which he planted in the ground before going away. It was
+that crescent of plain deal at the end of a stick which is still to be
+seen in the midst of the worm-eaten crosses, in the shadow of the belfry
+of L----.
+
+There the same decay works towards the intermingling and the
+reconciliation of ancient symbols and ancient dogmas.
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Nogue is courageous, but Norman; this gives to courage a special
+form, which excludes neither reserve, nor prudence, nor moderation of
+language.
+
+On the day when he was wounded, he bore a preliminary operation with
+perfect calm. Lifting up his shattered arm, I said:
+
+"Are you suffering very much?" And he barely opened his lips to reply:
+
+"Well... perhaps a bit."
+
+Fever came the following days, and with it a certain discomfort. Nogue
+could not eat, and when asked if he did not feel rather hungry, he shook
+his head:
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+Well, the arm was broken very high up, the wound looked unhealthy, the
+fever ran high, and we made up our minds that it was necessary to come
+to a decision.
+
+"My poor Nogue," I said, "we really can't do anything with that arm of
+yours. Be sensible. Let us take it off."
+
+If we had waited for his answer, Nogue would have been dead by now. His
+face expressed great dissatisfaction, but he said neither yes nor no.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Nogue. I will guarantee the success of the operation."
+
+Then he asked to make his will. When the will had been made, Nogue was
+laid upon the table and operated upon, without having formulated either
+consent or refusal.
+
+When the first dressing was made, Nogue looked at his bleeding shoulder,
+and said:
+
+"I suppose you couldn't have managed to leave just a little bit of arm?"
+
+After a few days the patient was able to sit up in an arm-chair. His
+whole being bore witness to a positive resurrection, but his tongue
+remained cautious.
+
+"Well, now, you see, you're getting on capitally."
+
+"Hum... might be better."
+
+Never could he make up his mind to give his whole-hearted approval, even
+after the event, to the decision which had saved his life. When we said
+to him:
+
+"YOU'RE all right. We've done the business for YOU!" he would not commit
+himself.
+
+"We shall see, we shall see."
+
+He got quite well, and we sent him into the interior. Since then, he
+has written to us, "business letters," prudent letters which he signs "a
+poor mutilated fellow."
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Lapointe and Ropiteau always meet in the dressing ward. Ropiteau is
+brought in on a stretcher, and Lapointe arrives on foot, jauntily,
+holding up his elbow, which is going on "as well as possible."
+
+Lying on the table, the dressings removed from his thigh, Ropiteau waits
+to be tended, looking at a winter fly walking slowly along the ceiling,
+like an old man bowed down with sorrow. As soon as Ropiteau's wounds
+are laid bare, Lapointe, who is versed in these matters, opens the
+conversation.
+
+"What do they put on it?"
+
+"Well, only yellow spirit."
+
+"That's the strongest of all. It stings, but it is first-rate for
+strengthening the flesh. I always get ether."
+
+"Ether stinks so!"
+
+"Yes, it stinks, but one gets used to it. It warms the blood. Don't you
+have tubes any longer?"
+
+"They took out the last on Tuesday."
+
+"Mine have been taken away, too. Wait a minute, old chap, let me look at
+it. Does it itch?"
+
+"Yes, it feels like rats gnawing at me."
+
+"If it feels like rats, it's all right. Mine feels like rats, too. Don't
+you want to scratch?"
+
+"Yes, but they say I mustn't."
+
+"No, of course, you mustn't.... But you can always tap on the dressing a
+little with your finger. That is a relief."
+
+Lapointe leans over and examines Ropiteau's large wound.
+
+"Old chap, it's getting on jolly well. Same here; I'll show you
+presently. It's red, the skin is beginning to grow again. But it is
+thin, very thin."
+
+Lapointe sits down to have his dressing cut away, then he makes a half
+turn towards Ropiteau.
+
+"You see--getting on famously."
+
+Ropiteau admires unreservedly.
+
+"Yes, you're right. It looks first-rate."
+
+"And you know... such a beastly mess came out of it."
+
+At this moment, the busy forceps cover up the wounds with the dressing,
+and the operation comes to an end.
+
+"So long!" says Lapointe to his elbow, casting a farewell glance at it.
+And he adds, as he gets to the door:
+
+"Now there are only the damned fingers that won't get on. But I don't
+care. I've made up my mind to be a postman."
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Bouchenton was not very communicative. We knew nothing of his past
+history. As to his future plans, he revealed them by one day presenting
+to the head doctor for his signature a paper asking leave to open a
+Moorish cafe at Medea after his recovery, a request the head doctor felt
+himself unable to endorse.
+
+Bouchenton had undergone a long martyrdom in order to preserve an arm
+from which the bone had been partially removed, but from which a certain
+amount of work might still be expected. He screamed like the others, and
+his cry was "Mohabdi! Mohabdi!" When the forceps came near, he cried:
+"Don't put them in!" And after this he maintained a silence made up of
+dignity and indolence. During the day he was to be seen wandering about
+the wards, holding up his ghostly muffled arm with his sound hand.
+In the evening, he learned to play draughts, because it is a serious,
+silent game, and requires consideration.
+
+Now one day when Bouchenton, seated on a chair, was waiting for his
+wound to be dressed, the poor adjutant Figuet began to complain in a
+voice that was no more than the shadow of a voice, just as his body was
+no more than the shadow of a body.
+
+Figuet was crawling at the time up the slopes of a Calvary where he was
+soon to fall once more, never to rise again.
+
+The most stupendous courage and endurance foundered then in a despair
+for which there seemed henceforth to be no possible alleviation.
+
+Figuet, I say, began to complain, and every one in the ward feigned to
+be engrossed in his occupation, and to hear nothing, because when such a
+man began to groan, the rest felt that the end of all things had come.
+
+Bouchenton turned his head, looked at the adjutant, seized his flabby
+arm carefully with his right hand, and set out. Walking with little
+short steps he came to the table where the suffering man lay.
+
+Stretching out his neck, his great bowed body straining in an effort of
+attention, he looked at the wounds, the pus, the soiled bandages, the
+worn, thin face, and his own wooden visage laboured under the stress of
+all kinds of feelings.
+
+Then Bouchenton did a very simple thing; he relaxed his hold on his own
+boneless arm, held out his right hand to Figuet, seized his transparent
+fingers and held them tightly clasped.
+
+The adjutant ceased groaning. As long as the silent pressure lasted, he
+ceased to complain, ceased perhaps to suffer. Bouchenton kept his right
+hand there as long as it was necessary.
+
+I saw this, Bouchenton, my brother. I will not forget it. And I saw,
+too, your aching, useless left arm, which you had been obliged to
+abandon in order to have a hand to give, hanging by your side like a
+limp rag.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+To be over forty years old, to be a tradesman of repute, well
+known throughout one's quarter, to be at the head of a prosperous
+provision-dealer's business, and to get two fragments of shell--in the
+back and the left buttock respectively--is really a great misfortune;
+yet this is what happened to M. Levy, infantryman and Territorial.
+
+I never spoke familiarly to M. Levy, because of his age and his air of
+respectability; and perhaps, too, because, in his case, I felt a great
+and special need to preserve my authority.
+
+Monsieur Levy was not always "a good patient." When I first approached
+him, he implored me not to touch him "at any price."
+
+I disregarded these injunctions, and did what was necessary. Throughout
+the process, Monsieur Levy was snoring, be it said. But he woke up
+at last, uttered one or two piercing cries, and stigmatised me as a
+"brute." All right.
+
+Then I showed him the big pieces of cast-iron I had removed from his
+back and his buttock respectively. Monsieur Levy's eyes at once filled
+with tears; he murmured a few feeling words about his family, and then
+pressed my hands warmly: "Thank you, thank you, dear Doctor."
+
+Since then, Monsieur Levy has suffered a good deal, I must admit. There
+are the plugs! And those abominable india-rubber tubes we push into the
+wounds! Monsieur Levy, kneeling and prostrating himself, his head in
+his bolster, suffered every day and for several days without stoicism or
+resignation. I was called an "assassin" and also on several occasions, a
+"brute." All right.
+
+However, as I was determined that Monsieur Levy should get well, I
+renewed the plugs, and looked sharply after the famous india-rubber
+tubes.
+
+The time came when my hands were warmly pressed and my patient said:
+"Thank you, thank you, dear Doctor," every day.
+
+At last Monsieur Levy ceased to suffer, and confined himself to the
+peevish murmurs of a spoilt beauty or a child that has been scolded. But
+now no one takes him seriously. He has become the delight of the ward;
+he laughs so heartily when the dressing is over, he is naturally so gay
+and playful, that I am rather at a loss as to the proper expression to
+assume when, alluding to the past, he says, with a look in which good
+nature, pride, simplicity, and a large proportion of playful malice are
+mingled:
+
+"I suffered so much! so much!"
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+He was no grave, handsome Arab, looking as if he had stepped from the
+pages of the "Arabian Nights," but a kind of little brown monster with
+an overhanging forehead and ugly, scanty hair.
+
+He lay upon the table, screaming, because his abdomen was very painful
+and his hip was all tumefied. What could we say to him? He could
+understand nothing; he was strange, terrified, pitiable....
+
+At my wits' ends, I took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips.
+His whole face changed. He took hold of the cigarette delicately between
+two bony fingers; he had a way of holding it which was a marvel of
+aristocratic elegance.
+
+While we finished the dressing, the poor fellow smoked slowly and
+gravely, with all the distinction of an Oriental prince; then, with a
+negligent gesture, he threw away the cigarette, of which he had only
+smoked half.
+
+Presently, suddenly becoming an animal, he spit upon my apron, and
+kissed my hand like a dog, repeating something which sounded like
+"Bouia! Bouia!"
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Gautreau looked like a beast of burden. He was heavy, square, solid of
+base and majestic of neck and throat. What he could carry on his back
+would have crushed an ordinary man; he had big bones, so hard that the
+fragment of shell which struck him on the skull only cracked it, and got
+no further into it. Gautreau arrived at the hospital alone, on foot; he
+sat down on a chair in the corner, saying:
+
+"No need to hurry; it's only a scratch."
+
+We gave him a cup of tea with rum in it, and he began to hum:
+
+    En courant par les epeignes
+    Je m'etios fait un ecourchon,
+    Et en courant par les epeignes
+    Et en courant apres not' couchon.
+
+"Ah!" said Monsieur Boissin, "you are a man! Come here, let me see."
+
+Gautreau went into the operating ward saying:
+
+"It feels queer to be walking on dry ground when you've just come off
+the slime. You see: it's only a scratch. But one never knows: there may
+be some bits left in it."
+
+Dr. Boussin probed the wound, and felt the cracked bone. He was an old
+surgeon who had his own ideas about courage and pain. He made up his
+mind.
+
+"I am in a hurry; you are a man. There is just a little something to be
+done to you. Kneel down there and don't stir."
+
+A few minutes later, Gautreau was on his knees, holding on to the leg
+of the table. His head was covered with blood-stained bandages, and Dr.
+Boussin, chisel in hand, was tapping on his skull with the help of a
+little mallet, like a sculptor. Gautreau exclaimed:
+
+"Monsieur Bassin, Monsieur Bassin, you're hurting me."
+
+"Not Bassin, but Boussin," replied the old man calmly.
+
+"Well, Boussin, if you like."
+
+There was a silence, and then Gautreau suddenly added:
+
+"Monsieur Bassin, you are killing me with these antics."
+
+"No fear!"
+
+"Monsieur Bassin, I tell you you're killing me."
+
+"Just a second more."
+
+"Monsieur Bassin, you're driving nails into my head, it's a shame."
+
+"I've almost finished."
+
+"Monsieur Bassin, I can't stand any more."
+
+"It's all over now," said the surgeon, laying down his instruments.
+
+Gautreau's head was swathed with cotton wool and he left the ward.
+
+"The old chap means well," he said, laughing, "but fancy knocking like
+that... with a hammer! It's not that it hurts so much; the pain was no
+great matter. But it kills one, that sort of thing, and I'm not going to
+stand that."
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+There is only one man in the world who can hold Hourticq's leg, and that
+is Monet.
+
+Hourticq, who is a Southerner, cries despairingly: "Oh, cette jammbe,
+cette jammbe!" And his anxious eyes look eagerly round for some one: not
+his doctor, but his orderly, Monet. Whatever happens, the doctor will
+always do those things which doctors do. Monet is the only person who
+can take the heel and then the foot in both hands, raise the leg gently,
+and hold it in the air as long as it is necessary.
+
+There are people, it seems, who think this notion ridiculous. They are
+all jealous persons who envy Monet's position and would like to show
+that they too know how to hold Hourticq's leg properly. But it is not my
+business to show favour to the ambitious. As soon as Hourticq is brought
+in, I call Monet. If Monet is engaged, well, I wait. He comes, lays
+hold of the leg, and Hourticq ceases to lament. It is sometimes a long
+business, very long; big drops of sweat come out on Monet's forehead.
+But I know that he would not give up his place for anything in the
+world.
+
+When Mazy arrived at the hospital, Hourticq, who is no egoist, said to
+him at once in a low tone:
+
+"Yours is a leg too, isn't it? You must try to get Monet to hold it for
+you."
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+If Bouchard were not so bored, he would not be very wretched, for he is
+very courageous, and he has a good temper. But he is terribly bored, in
+his gentle, uncomplaining fashion. He is too ill to talk or play games.
+He cannot sleep; he can only contemplate the wall, and his own thoughts
+which creep slowly along it, like caterpillars.
+
+In the morning, I bring a catheter with me, and when Bouchard's wounds
+are dressed, I apply it, for unfortunately, he can no longer perform
+certain functions independently.
+
+Bouchard has crossed his hands behind the nape of his neck, and watches
+the process with a certain interest. I ask:
+
+"Did I hurt you? Is it very unpleasant?"
+
+Bouchard gives a melancholy smile and shakes his head:
+
+"Oh, no, not at all! In fact it rather amuses me. It makes a few minutes
+pass. The day is so long...."
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THOUGHTS OF PROSPER RUFFIN
+
+
+... God! How awful it is in this carriage! Who is it who is groaning
+like that? It's maddening! And then, all this would never have happened
+if they had only brought the coffee at the right time. Well now, a
+wretched 77... oh, no! Who is it who is groaning like that? God, another
+jolt! No, no, man, we are not salad. Take care there. My kidneys are all
+smashed.
+
+Ah! now something is dripping on my nose. Hi! You up there, what's
+happening? He doesn't answer. I suppose it's blood, all this mess.
+
+Now again, some one is beginning to squeal like a pig. By the way, can
+it be me? What! it was I who was groaning! Upon my word, it's a little
+too strong, that! It was I myself who was making all the row, and I did
+not know it. It's odd to hear oneself screaming.
+
+Ah! now it's stopping, their beastly motor.
+
+Look, there's the sun! What's that tree over there? I know, it's a
+Japanese pine. Well, you see, I'm a gardener, old chap. Oh, oh, oh! My
+back! What will Felicie say to me?
+
+Look, there's Felicie coming down to the washing trough. She pretends
+not to see me.... I will steal behind the elder hedge. Felicie! Felicie!
+I have a piece of a 77 in my kidneys. I like her best in her blue
+bodice.
+
+What are you putting over my nose, you people? It stinks horribly. I am
+choking, I tell you. Felicie, Felicie. Put on your blue bodice with the
+white spots, my little Feli... Oh, but... oh, but...!
+
+Oh, the Whitsuntide bells already! God--the bells already... the Whitsun
+bells... the bells....
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+I remember him very well, although he was not long with us. Indeed I
+think that I shall never forget him, and yet he stayed such a short
+time....
+
+When he arrived, we told him that an operation was necessary, and he
+made a movement with his head, as if to say that it was our business,
+not his.
+
+We operated, and as soon as he recovered consciousness, he went off
+again into a dream which was like a glorious delirium, silent and
+haughty.
+
+His breathing was so impeded by blood that it sounded like groaning; but
+his eyes were full of a strange serenity. That look was never with us.
+
+I had to uncover and dress his wounds several times; and THOSE WOUNDS
+MUST HAVE SUFFERED. But to the last, he himself seemed aloof from
+everything, even his own sufferings.
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+"Come in here. You can see him once more."
+
+I open the door, and push the big fair artilleryman into the room where
+his brother has just died.
+
+I turn back the sheet and uncover the face of the corpse. The flesh is
+still warm.
+
+The big fellow looks like a peasant. He holds his helmet in both hands,
+and stares at his brother's face with eyes full of horror and amazement.
+Then suddenly, he begins to cry out:
+
+"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!"
+
+This cry of the rough man is unexpected, and grandiose as the voice of
+ancient tragedians chanting the threnody of a hero.
+
+Then he drops his helmet, throws himself on his knees beside the
+death-bed, takes the dead face between his hands and kisses it gently
+and slowly with a little sound of the lips, as one kisses a baby's hand.
+
+I take him by the arm and lead him away. His sturdy body is shaken by
+sobs which are like the neighing of a horse; he is blinded by his tears,
+and knocks against all the furniture. He can do nothing but lament in a
+broken voice:
+
+"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!"
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+La Gloriette is amongst the pine-trees. I lift up a corner of the canvas
+and he is there. In spite of the livid patches on the skin, in spite
+of the rigidity of the features, and the absence for all time of the
+glance, it is undoubtedly the familiar face.
+
+What a long time he suffered to win the right to be at last this thing
+which suffers no more!
+
+I draw back the winding-sheet. The body is as yet but little touched
+by corruption. The dressings are in place, as before. And as before, I
+think, as I draw back the sheet, of the look he will turn on me at the
+moment of suffering.
+
+But there is no longer any look, no longer any suffering, no longer even
+any movements. Only, only unimaginable eternity.
+
+For whom is the damp autumn breeze which flutters the canvas hung before
+the door? For whom the billowy murmur of the pine-trees and the rays of
+light crossed by a flight of insects? For whom this growling of cannon
+mingling now with the landscape like one of the sounds of nature? For me
+only, for me, alone here with the dead.
+
+The corpse is still so near to the living man that I cannot make up my
+mind that I am alone, that I cannot make up my mind to think as when I
+am alone.
+
+For indeed we spent too many days hoping together, enduring together,
+and if you will allow me to say so, my comrade, suffering together.
+We spent too many days wishing for the end of the fever, examining the
+wound, searching after the deeply rooted cause of the disaster--both
+tremulous, you from the effort to bear your pain, I sometimes from
+having inflicted it.
+
+We spent so many days, do you remember, oh, body without a soul ... so
+many days fondly expecting the medal you had deserved. But it seems that
+one must have given an eye or a limb to be put on the list, and you, all
+of a sudden, you gave your life. The medal had not come, for it does not
+travel so quickly as death.
+
+So many days! And now we are together again, for the last time.
+
+Well! I came for a certain purpose. I came to learn certain things at
+last that your body can tell me now.
+
+I open the case. As before, I cut the dressings with the shining
+scissors. And I was just about to say to you, as before: "If I hurt you,
+call out."
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+At the edge of the beetroot field, a few paces from the road, in the
+white sand of Champagne, there is a burial-ground.
+
+Branches of young beech encircle it, making a rustic barrier that shuts
+out nothing, but allows the eyes and the winds to wander at will.
+There is a porch like those of Norman gardens. Near the entrance four
+pine-trees were planted, and these have died standing at their posts,
+like soldiers.
+
+It is a burial-ground of men.
+
+In the villages, round the churches, or on the fair hill-sides, among
+vines and flowers, there are ancient graveyards which the centuries
+filled slowly, and where woman sleeps beside man, and the child beside
+the grandfather.
+
+But this burial-ground owes nothing to old age or sickness. It is the
+burial-ground of young, strong men.
+
+We may read their names on the hundreds of little crosses which repeat
+daily in speechless unison: "There must be something more precious than
+life, more necessary than life... since we are here."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF MERCIER
+
+
+Mercier is dead, and I saw his corpse weep.... I did not think such a
+thing possible. The orderly had just washed his face and combed his grey
+hair.
+
+I said: "You are not forty yet, my poor Mercier, and your hair is almost
+white already."
+
+"It is because my life has been a very hard one, and I have had so many
+sorrows. I have worked so hard... so hard! And I have had so little
+luck."
+
+There are pitiful little wrinkles all over his face; a thousand
+disappointments have left indelible traces there. And yet his eyes are
+always smiling; from out his faded features they shine, bright with an
+artless candour and radiant with hope.
+
+"You will cure me, and perhaps I shall be luckier in the future."
+
+I say "yes," and I think, "Alas! No, no."
+
+But suddenly he calls me. Great dark hollows appear under the smiling
+eyes. A livid sweat bathes his forehead.
+
+"Come, come!" he says. "Something terrible is taking hold of me. Surely
+I am going to die."
+
+We busy ourselves with the poor paralysed body. The face alone labours
+to translate its sufferings. The hands make the very slightest movement
+on the sheet. The bullets of the machine-gun have cut off all the rest
+from the sources of life.
+
+We do what we can, but I feel his heart beating more feebly; his lips
+make immense efforts to beg for one drop, one drop only from the vast
+cup of air.
+
+Gradually he escapes from this hell. I divine that his hand makes a
+movement as if to detain mine.
+
+"Stay by me," he says; "I am afraid."
+
+I stay by him. The sweat no longer stands on his brow. The horrible
+distress passes off. The air flows again into the miserable breast. The
+gentle eyes have not ceased to smile.
+
+"You will save me after all," he says; "I have had too miserable a life
+to die yet, Monsieur."
+
+I press his hand to give him confidence, and I feel that his hard hand
+is happy in mine. My fingers have groped in his flesh, his blood has
+flowed over them, and this creates strong ties between two men.
+
+Calm seems completely restored. I talk to him of his beautiful native
+place. He was a baker in a village of Le Cantal. I passed through
+it once as a traveller in peace time. We recall the scent of the
+juniper-bushes on the green slopes in summer, and the mineral fountains
+with wonderful flavours that gush forth among the mountains.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaims, "I shall always see you!"
+
+"You will see me, Mercier?"
+
+He is a very simple fellow; he tries to explain, and merely adds:
+
+"In my eyes.... I shall always see you in my eyes."
+
+What else does he see? What other thing is suddenly reflected in his
+eyes?
+
+"I think... oh, it is beginning again!"
+
+It is true; the spasm is beginning again. It is terrible. In spite of
+our efforts, it overcomes the victim, and this time we are helpless.
+
+"I feel that I am going to die," he says.
+
+The smiling eyes are still fixed imploringly upon me.
+
+"But you will save me, you will save me!"
+
+Death has already laid a disfiguring hand on Mercier.
+
+"Stay by me."
+
+Yes, I will stay by you, and hold your hand. Is there nothing more I can
+do for you?
+
+His nostrils quiver. It is hard to have been wretched for forty years,
+and to have to give up the humble hope of smelling the pungent scent of
+the juniper-bushes once more....
+
+His lips contract, and then relax gradually, so sadly. It is hard to
+have suffered for forty years, and to be unable to quench one's last
+thirst with the wonderful waters of our mountain springs....
+
+Now the dark sweat gathers again on the hollow brow. Oh, it is hard to
+die after forty years of toil, without ever having had leisure to wipe
+the sweat from a brow that has always been bent over one's work.
+
+The sacrifice is immense, and we cannot choose our hour; we must make it
+as soon as we hear the voice that demands it.
+
+The man must lay down his tools and say: "Here I am."
+
+Oh, how hard it is to leave this life of unceasing toil and sorrow!
+
+The eyes still smile feebly. They smile to the last moment.
+
+He speaks no more. He breathes no more. The heart throbs wildly, then
+stops dead like a foundered horse.
+
+Mercier is dead. The pupils of his eyes are solemnly distended upon a
+glassy abyss. All is over. I have not saved him....
+
+Then from those dead eyes great tears ooze slowly and flow upon his
+cheeks. I see his features contract as if to weep throughout eternity.
+
+I keep the dead hand still clasped in mine for several long minutes.
+
+
+
+
+
+VERDUN
+
+
+FEBRUARY-APRIL 1916
+
+
+We were going northward by forced marches, through a France that was
+like a mournful garden planted with crosses. We were no longer in doubt
+as to our appointed destination; every day since we had disembarked at
+B----our orders had enjoined us to hasten our advance to the fighting
+units of the Army Corps. This Army Corps was contracting, and drawing
+itself together hurriedly, its head already in the thick of the fray,
+its tail still winding along the roads, across the battle-field of the
+Marne.
+
+February was closing in, damp and icy, with squalls of sleet, under a
+sullen, hideous sky, lowering furiously down to the level of the ground.
+Everywhere there were graves, uniformly decent, or rather according to
+pattern, showing a shield of tri-colour or black and white, and figures.
+Suddenly, we came upon immense flats, whence the crosses stretched out
+their arms between the poplars like men struggling to save themselves
+from being engulfed. Many ancient villages, humble, irremediable ruins.
+And yet here and there, perched upon these, frail cabins of planks and
+tiles, sending forth thin threads of smoke, and emitting a timid light,
+in an attempt to begin life again as before, on the same spot as before.
+Now and again we chanced upon a hamlet which the hurricane had passed by
+almost completely, full to overflowing with the afflux of neighbouring
+populations.
+
+Beyond P----, our advance, though it continued to be rapid, became
+very difficult, owing to the confluence of convoys and troops. The main
+roads, reserved for the military masses which were under the necessity
+of moving rapidly, arriving early, and striking suddenly, were barred
+to us. From every point of the horizon disciplined multitudes converged,
+with their arsenal of formidable implements, rolling along in an
+atmosphere of benzine and hot oil. Through this ordered mass, our
+convoys threaded their way tenaciously and advanced. We could see on the
+hill sides, crawling like a clan of migrating ants, stretcher-bearers
+and their dogs drawing handcarts for the wounded, then the columns of
+orderlies, muddy and exhausted, then the ambulances, which every week of
+war loads a little more heavily, dragged along by horses in a steam of
+sweat.
+
+From time to time, the whole train halted at some cross-road, and the
+ambulances allowed more urgent things to pass in front of them--things
+designed to kill, sturdy grey mortars borne along post haste in a
+metallic rumble.
+
+A halt, a draught of wine mingled with rain, a few minutes to choke over
+a mouthful of stale bread, and we were off again, longing for the next
+halt, for a dry shelter, for an hour of real sleep.
+
+Soon after leaving C----we began to meet fugitives. This complicated
+matters very much, and the spectacle began to show an odious likeness to
+the scenes of the beginning of the war, the scenes of the great retreat.
+
+Keeping along the roadsides, the by-roads, the field-paths, they were
+fleeing from the Verdun district, whence they had been evacuated by
+order. They were urging on miserable old horses, drawing frail carts,
+their wheels sunk in the ruts up to the nave, loaded with mattresses and
+eiderdowns, with appliances for eating and sleeping, and sometimes too,
+with cages in which birds were twittering. On they went, from village to
+village, seeking an undiscoverable lodging, but not complaining, saying
+merely:
+
+"You are going to Verdun? We have just come from X----. We were ordered
+to leave. It is very difficult to find a place to settle down in."
+
+Women passed. Two of them were dragging a little baby-carriage in which
+an infant lay asleep. One of them was quite young, the other old. They
+held up their skirts out of the mud. They were wearing little town
+shoes, and every minute they sank into the slime like ourselves,
+sometimes above their ankles.
+
+All day long we encountered similar processions. I do not remember
+seeing one of these women weep; but they seemed terrified, and mortally
+tired.
+
+Meanwhile, the sound of the guns became fuller and more regular. All the
+roads we caught sight of in the country seemed to be bearing their load
+of men and of machines. Here and there a horse which had succumbed at
+its task lay rotting at the foot of a hillock. A subdued roar rose to
+the ear, made up of trampling hoofs, of grinding wheels, of the buzz of
+motors, and of a multitude talking and eating on the march.
+
+Suddenly we debouched at the edge of a wood upon a height whence we
+could see the whole battle-field. It was a vast expanse of plains and
+slopes, studded with the grey woods of winter. Long trails of smoke from
+burning buildings settled upon the landscape. And other trails, minute
+and multi-coloured, rose from the ground wherever projectiles were
+raining. Nothing more: wisps of smoke, brief flashes visible even
+in broad daylight, and a string of captive balloons, motionless and
+observant witnesses of all.
+
+But we were already descending the incline and the various planes of the
+landscape melted one after the other. As we were passing over a bridge,
+I saw in a group of soldiers a friend I had not met since the beginning
+of the war. We could not stop, so he walked along with me for a while,
+and we spent these few minutes recalling the things of the past. Then as
+he left me we embraced, though we had never done so in times of peace.
+
+Night was falling. Knowing that we were now at our last long lap, we
+encouraged the worn-out men. At R----I lost touch with my formation. I
+halted on the roadside, calling aloud into the darkness. An artillery
+train passed, covering me with mud to my eyes. Finally, I picked up my
+friends, and we marched on through villages illumined by the camp fires
+which were flickering under a driving rain, through a murky country
+which the flash of cannon suddenly showed to be covered with a multitude
+of men, of horses, and of martial objects.
+
+It was February 27. Between ten and eleven at night we arrived at a
+hospital installed in some wooden sheds, and feverishly busy. We were at
+B----, a miserable village on which next day the Germans launched some
+thirty monster-shells, yet failed to kill so much as a mouse.
+
+The night was spent on straw, to the stentorian snores of fifty men
+overcome by fatigue. Then reveille, and again, liquid mud over the
+ankles. As the main road was forbidden to our ambulances there was an
+excited discussion as a result of which we separated: the vehicles to
+go in search of a by-way, and we, the pedestrians, to skirt the roads on
+which long lines of motor-lorries, coming and going, passed each other
+in haste like the carriages of an immense train.
+
+We had known since midnight where we were to take up our quarters; the
+suburb of G----was only an hour's march further on. In the fields, right
+and left, were bivouacs of colonial troops with muddy helmets; they had
+come back from the firing line, and seemed strangely quiet. In front
+of us lay the town, half hidden, full of crackling sounds and echoes.
+Beyond, the hills of the Meuse, on which we could distinguish the houses
+of the villages, and the continuous rain of machine-gun bullets. We
+skirted a meadow strewn with forsaken furniture, beds, chests, a whole
+fortune which looked like the litter of a hospital. At last we arrived
+at the first houses, and we were shown the place where we were expected.
+
+There were two brick buildings of several storeys, connected by a glazed
+corridor; the rest of the enclosure was occupied by wooden sheds. Behind
+lay orchards and gardens, the first houses of the suburb. In front, the
+wall of a park, a meadow, a railway track, and La Route, the wonderful
+and terrible road that enters the town at this very point.
+
+Groups of lightly wounded men were hobbling towards the hospital;
+the incessant rush of motors kept up the feverish circulation of a
+demolished ant-hill.
+
+As we approached the buildings, a doctor came out to meet us.
+
+"Come, come. There's work enough for a month."
+
+It was true. The effluvium and the moans of several hundreds of wounded
+men greeted us. Ambulance No----, which we had come to relieve, had
+been hard at it since the night before, without having made much visible
+progress. Doctors and orderlies, their faces haggard from a night of
+frantic toil, came and went, choosing among the heaps of wounded, and
+tended two while twenty more poured in.
+
+While waiting for our material, we went over the buildings. But a
+few days before, contagious diseases had been treated here. A hasty
+disinfection had left the wards reeking with formaline which rasped the
+throat without disguising the sickly stench of the crowded sufferers.
+They were huddled round the stoves in the rooms, lying upon the beds of
+the dormitories, or crouching on the flags of the passages.
+
+In each ward of the lower storey there were thirty or forty men of every
+branch of the service, moaning and going out from time to time to crawl
+to the latrines, or, mug in hand, to fetch something to drink.
+
+As we explored further, the scene became more terrible; in the back
+rooms and in the upper building a number of severely wounded men had
+been placed, who began to howl as soon as we entered. Many of them had
+been there for several days. The brutality of circumstances, the relief
+of units, the enormous sum of work, all combined to create one of those
+situations which dislocate and overwhelm the most willing service.
+
+We opened a door, and the men who were lying within began to scream at
+the top of their voices. Some, lying on their stretchers on the floor,
+seized us by the legs as we passed, imploring us to attend to them. A
+few bewildered orderlies hurried hither and thither, powerless to meet
+the needs of this mass of suffering. Every moment I felt my coat seized,
+and heard a voice saying:
+
+"I have been here four days. Dress my wounds, for God's sake."
+
+And when I answered that I would come back again immediately, the poor
+fellow began to cry.
+
+"They all say they will come back, but they never do."
+
+Occasionally a man in delirium talked to us incoherently as we moved
+along. Sometimes we went round a quiet bed to see the face of the
+sufferer, and found only a corpse.
+
+Each ward we inspected revealed the same distress, exhaled the same
+odour of antiseptics and excrements, for the orderlies could not always
+get to the patient in time, and many of the men relieved themselves
+apparently unconcerned.
+
+I remember a little deserted room in disorder, on the table a bowl of
+coffee with bread floating in it; a woman's slippers on the floor,
+and in a corner, toilet articles and some strands of fair hair.... I
+remember a corner where a wounded man suffering from meningitis,
+called out unceasingly: 27, 28, 29... 27, 28, 29... a prey to a strange
+obsession of numbers. I see a kitchen where a soldier was plucking a
+white fowl... I see an Algerian non-commissioned officer pacing the
+corridor....
+
+Towards noon, the head doctor arrived followed by my comrades, and our
+vehicles. With him I made the round of the buildings again while they
+were unpacking our stores. I had got hold of a syringe, while waiting
+for a knife, and I set to work distributing morphia. The task before
+us seemed immense, and every minute it increased. We began to divide it
+hastily, to assign to each his part. The cries of the sufferers muffled
+the sound of a formidable cannonade. An assistant at my side, whom I
+knew to be energetic and resolute, muttered between his teeth: "No! no!
+Anything rather than war!"
+
+But we had first to introduce some order into our Inferno.
+
+In a few hours this order appeared and reigned. We were exhausted by
+days of marching and nights of broken sleep, but men put off their packs
+and set to work with a silent courage that seemed to exalt even the
+least generous natures. Our first spell lasted for thirty-six hours,
+during which each one gave to the full measure of his powers, without a
+thought of self.
+
+Four operation-wards had been arranged. The wounded were brought in
+unceasingly, and a grave and prudent mind pronounced upon the state of
+each, upon his fate, his future.... Confronted by the overwhelming
+flood of work to be done, the surgeon, before seizing the knife, had
+to meditate deeply, and make a decision as to the sacrifice which
+would ensure life, or give some hope of life. In a moment of effective
+thought, he had to perceive and weigh a man's whole existence, then act,
+with method and audacity.
+
+As soon as one wounded man left the ward, another was brought in; while
+the preparations for the operation were being made, we went to choose
+among and classify the patients beforehand, for many needed nothing
+more; they had passed beyond human aid, and awaited, numb and
+unconscious, the crowning mercy of death.
+
+The word "untransportable" once pronounced, directed all our work. The
+wounded capable of waiting a few hours longer for attention, and of
+going elsewhere for it were removed. But when the buzz of the motors was
+heard, every one wanted to go, and men begging to be taken away entered
+upon their death agony as they assured us they felt quite strong enough
+to travel....
+
+Some told us their histories; the majority were silent. They wanted
+to go elsewhere... and above all, to sleep, to drink. Natural wants
+dominated, and made them forget the anguish of their wounds....
+
+I remember one poor fellow who was asked if he wanted anything. ... He
+had a terrible wound in the chest, and was waiting to be examined. He
+replied timidly that he wanted the urinal, and when the orderly hurried
+to him bringing it, he was dead.
+
+The pressure of urgent duty had made us quite unmindful of the battle
+close by, and of the deafening cannonade. However, towards evening, the
+buildings trembled under the fury of the detonations. A little armoured
+train had taken up its position near us. The muzzle of a naval gun
+protruded from it, and from moment to moment thrust out a broad tongue
+of flame with a catastrophic roar.
+
+The work was accelerated at the very height of the uproar. Rivers of
+water had run along the corridors, washing down the mud, the blood and
+the refuse of the operation-wards. The men who had been operated on were
+carried to beds on which clean sheets had been spread. The open windows
+let in the pure, keen air, and night fell on the hillsides of the Meuse,
+where the tumult raged and lightnings flashed.
+
+Sometimes a wounded man brought us the latest news of the battle.
+Between his groans, he described the incredible bombardment, the
+obstinate resistance, the counter-attacks at the height of the
+hurly-burly.
+
+All these simple fellows ended their story with the same words,
+surprising words at such a moment of suffering:
+
+"They can't get through now...."
+
+Then they began to moan again.
+
+During the terrible weeks of the battle, it was from the lips of
+these tortured men that we heard the most amazing words of hope and
+confidence, uttered between two cries of anguish.
+
+The first night passed under this stress and pressure. The morning found
+us face to face with labours still vast, but classified, divided, and
+half determined.
+
+A superior officer came to visit us. He seemed anxious.
+
+"They have spotted you," he said. "I hope you mayn't have to work upon
+each other. You will certainly be bombarded at noon."
+
+We had forgotten this prophecy by the time it was fulfilled.
+
+About noon, the air was rent by a screeching whistle, and some
+dozen shells fell within the hospital enclosure, piercing one of the
+buildings, but sparing the men. This was the beginning of an irregular
+but almost continuous bombardment, which was not specially directed
+against us, no doubt, but which threatened us incessantly.
+
+No cellars. Nothing but thin walls. The work went on.
+
+On the third day a lull enabled us to complete our organisation. The
+enemy was bombarding the town and the lines persistently. Our artillery
+replied, shell for shell, in furious salvos; a sort of thunderous wall
+rose around us which seemed to us like a rampart. ... The afflux of
+wounded had diminished. We had just received men who had been fighting
+in the open country, as in the first days of the war, but under a hail
+of projectiles hitherto reserved for the destruction of fortresses. Our
+comrade D----arrived from the battlefield on foot, livid, supporting his
+shattered elbow. He stammered out a tragic story: his regiment had held
+its ground under a surging tide of fire; thousands of huge shells had
+fallen in a narrow ravine, and he had seen limbs hanging in the thicket,
+a savage dispersal of human bodies. The men had held their ground, and
+then had fought....
+
+A quarter of an hour after his arrival D----, refreshed and
+strengthened, was contemplating the big wound in his arm on the
+operating table, and talking calmly of his ruined future....
+
+Towards the evening of this day, we were able to go out of the building,
+and breathe the unpolluted air for a few minutes.
+
+The noise reigned supreme, as silence reigns elsewhere. We were
+impregnated, almost intoxicated with it....
+
+A dozen of those captive balloons which the soldiers call "sausages"
+formed an aerial semi-circle and kept watch.
+
+On the other side of the hills the German balloons also watched in the
+purple mist to the East.
+
+Night came, and the balloons remained faithfully at their posts. We were
+in the centre of a circus of fire, woven by all the lightnings of the
+cannonade. To the south-west, however, a black breach opened, and one
+divined a free passage there towards the interior of the country and
+towards silence. A few hundred feet from us, a cross-road continually
+shelled by the enemy echoed to the shock of projectiles battering the
+ground like hammers on an anvil. We often found at our feet fragments of
+steel still hot, which in the gloom seemed slightly phosphorescent.
+
+From this day forth, a skilful combination of our hours and our means
+enabled us to take short spells of rest in turn. However, for a hundred
+reasons sleep was impossible to me, and for several weeks I forgot what
+it was to slumber.
+
+I used to retire, then, from time to time to the room set apart for my
+friend V----and myself, and lie down on a bed, overcome by a fatigue
+that verged on stupefaction; but the perpetual clatter of sabots and
+shoes in the passage kept the mind alert and the eyes open. The chorus
+of the wounded rose in gusts; there were always in the adjoining wards
+some dozen men wounded in the head, and suffering from meningitis, which
+provoked a kind of monotonous howling; there were men wounded in the
+abdomen, and crying out for the drink that was denied them; there were
+the men wounded in the chest, and racked by a low cough choked with
+blood... and all the rest who lay moaning, hoping for an impossible
+repose....
+
+Then I would get up and go back to work, haunted by the terrible fear
+that excess of fatigue might have made my eye less keen, my hand less
+steady than imperious duty required.
+
+At night more especially, the bombardment was renewed, in hurricane
+gusts.
+
+The air, rent by projectiles, mewed like a furious cat; the detonations
+came closer, then retired methodically, like the footsteps of a giant on
+guard around us, above us, upon us.
+
+Every morning the orderlies took advantage of a moment of respite to
+run and inspect the new craters, and unearth the fuses of shells.... I
+thought of the delightful phrase of assistant-surgeon M----whom we had
+attended for a wound on the head, and who said to me as I was taking him
+back to bed, and we heard the explosions close by:
+
+"Oh, the marmites (big shells) always fall short of one."
+
+But to a great many of the wounded, the perpetual uproar was
+intolerable. They implored us with tears to send them somewhere else;
+those we kept were, as a fact, unable to bear removal; we had to soothe
+them and keep them, in spite of everything. Some, overcome by fatigue,
+slept all day; others showed extraordinary indifference, perhaps due to
+a touch of delirium, like the man with a wound in the abdomen which I
+was dressing one morning, and who when he saw me turn my head at the
+sound of an explosion which ploughed up a neighbouring field, assured me
+quietly that "those things weren't dangerous."
+
+One night a policeman ran in with his face covered with blood.
+
+He was waving a lantern which he used to regulate the wheeled traffic,
+and he maintained that the enemy had spotted his lamp and had peppered
+him with bullets. As a fact, he had only some slight scratches. He went
+off, washed and bandaged, but only to come back to us the next day dead.
+A large fragment of iron had penetrated his eye.
+
+There was an entrance ward, where we sorted the cases. Ten times a day
+we thought we had emptied this reservoir of misery; but we always found
+it full again, paved with muddy stretchers on which men lay, panting and
+waiting.
+
+Opposite to this ante-room was a clearing ward; it seemed less dismal
+than the other, though it was just as bare, and not any lighter; but
+the wounded there were clean; they had been operated on, they wore white
+bandages, they had been comforted with hot drinks and with all sorts of
+hopes, for they had already escaped the first summons of Death.
+
+Between these two rooms, a clerk lived in the draught, the victim of an
+accumulation of indispensable and stupefying documents.
+
+In the beginning, the same man sat for three days and three nights
+chained to this ungrateful task until at last we saw him, his face
+convulsed, almost mad after unremittingly labelling all this suffering
+with names and figures.
+
+The first days of March were chilly, with alternations of snow and
+sunshine. When the air was pure, we heard it vibrate with the life of
+aeroplanes and echo to their contests. The dry throb of machine-guns,
+the incessant scream of shrapnel formed a kind of crackling dome over
+our heads. The German aeroplanes overwhelmed the environs with bombs
+which gave a prolonged whistle before tearing up the soil or gutting a
+house. One fell a few paces from the ward where I was operating on a
+man who had been wounded in the head. I remember the brief glance I cast
+outwards and the screams and headlong flight of the men standing under
+the windows.
+
+One morning I saw an airship which was cruising over the hills of the
+Meuse suddenly begin to trail after it, comet-wise, a thick tail of
+black smoke, and then rush to the earth, irradiated by a burst of flame,
+brilliant even in the daylight. And I thought of the two men who were
+experiencing this fall.
+
+The military situation improved daily, but the battle was no less
+strenuous. The guns used by the enemy for the destruction of men
+produced horrible wounds, certainly more severe on the whole than those
+we had tended during the first twenty months of a war that has been
+pitiless from its inception. All doctors must have noted the hideous
+success achieved in a very short time, in perfecting means of
+laceration. And we marvelled bitterly that man could adventure his frail
+organism through the deflagrations of a chemistry hardly disciplined as
+yet, which attains and surpasses the brutality of the blind forces of
+Nature. We marvelled more especially that flesh so delicate, the
+product and the producer of harmony, could endure such shocks and such
+dilapidations without instant disintegration.
+
+Many men came to us with one or several limbs torn off completely, yet
+they came still living.... Some had thirty or forty wounds, and even
+more. We examined each body systematically, passing from one sad
+discovery to another. They reminded us of those derelict vessels which
+let in the water everywhere. And just because these wrecks seemed
+irredeemably condemned to disaster, we clung to them in the obstinate
+hope of bringing them into port and perhaps floating them again.
+
+When the pressure was greatest, it was impossible to undress the men and
+get them washed properly before bringing them into the operating-ward.
+The problem was in these cases to isolate the work of the knife as
+far as possible from the surrounding mud, dirt and vermin: I have seen
+soldiers so covered with lice that the different parts of the
+dressings were invaded by them, and even the wounds. The poor creatures
+apologised, as if they were in some way to blame....
+
+At such moments patients succeeded each other so rapidly that we knew
+nothing of them beyond their wounds: the man was carried away, still
+plunged in sleep; we had made all the necessary decisions for him
+without having heard his voice or considered his face.
+
+We avoided overcrowding by at once evacuating all those on whom we had
+operated as soon as they were no longer in danger of complications.
+We loaded them up on the ambulances which followed one upon the other
+before the door. Some of the patients came back a few minutes later,
+riddled with fragments of shell; the driver had not succeeded in
+dodging the shells, and he was often wounded himself. In like manner
+the stretcher-bearers as they passed along the road were often hit
+themselves, and were brought in on their own hand-carts.
+
+One evening there was a "gas warning." Some gusts of wind arrived,
+bearing along an acrid odour. All the wounded were given masks and
+spectacles as a precaution. We hung them even on the heads of the beds
+where dying men lay... and then we waited. Happily, the wave spent
+itself before it reached us.
+
+A wounded man was brought in that evening with several injuries caused
+by a gas-shell. His eyes had quite disappeared under his swollen lids.
+His clothing was so impregnated with the poison that we all began to
+cough and weep, and a penetrating odour of garlic and citric acid hung
+about the ward for some time.
+
+Many things we had perforce to leave to chance, and I thought, during
+this alarm, of men just operated on, and plunged in the stupor of the
+chloroform, whom we should have to allow to wake, and then mask them
+immediately, or...
+
+ Ah, well!... in the midst of all this unimaginable tragedy,
+laughter was not quite quenched. This phenomenon is perhaps one of
+the characteristics, one of the greatnesses of our race--and in a more
+general way, no doubt, it is an imperative need of humanity at large.
+
+Certain of the wounded took a pride in cracking jokes, and they did so
+in words to which circumstances lent a poignant picturesqueness. These
+jests drew a laugh from us which was often closely akin to tears.
+
+One morning, in the sorting room, I noticed a big, curly-haired fellow
+who had lost a foot, and had all sorts of wounds and fractures in both
+legs. All these had been hastily bound up, clothing and all, in the
+hollow of the stretcher, which was stiff with blood. When I called the
+stretcher-bearers and contemplated this picture, the big man raised
+himself on his elbow and said:
+
+"Please give me a cigarette."
+
+Then he began to smoke, smiling cheerfully and telling absurd stories.
+We took off one of his legs up to the thigh, and as soon as he recovered
+consciousness, he asked for another cigarette, and set all the orderlies
+laughing.
+
+When, on leaving him, I asked this extraordinary man what his calling
+was, he replied modestly:
+
+"I am one of the employees of the Vichy Company."
+
+The orderlies in particular, nearly all simple folks, had a desire to
+laugh, even when they were worn out with fatigue, which made a pretext
+of the slightest thing, and notably of danger. One of them, called
+Tailleur, a buffoon with the airs of an executioner's assistant, would
+call out at the first explosions of a hurricane of shells:
+
+"Number your arms and legs! Look out for your nuts! The winkles are
+tumbling about!"
+
+All my little band would begin to laugh. And I had not the heart to
+check them, for their faces were drawn with fatigue, and this moment of
+doleful merriment at least prevented them from falling asleep as they
+stood.
+
+When the explosions came very close, this same Tailleur could not help
+exclaiming:
+
+"I am not going to be killed by a brick! I am going outside."
+
+I would look at him with a smile, and he would repeat: "As for me, I'm
+off," carefully rolling a bandage the while, which he did with great
+dexterity.
+
+His mixture of terror and swagger was a perpetual entertainment to us.
+One night, a hand-grenade fell out of the pocket of one of the wounded.
+In defiance of orders, Tailleur, who knew nothing at all about the
+handling of such things, turned it over and examined it for some time,
+with comic curiosity and distrust.
+
+One day a pig intended for our consumption was killed in the pig-sty by
+fragments of shell. We ate it, and the finding by one of the orderlies
+of some bits of metal in his portion of meat gave occasion for a great
+many jests.
+
+For a fortnight we were unable to go beyond the hospital enclosure.
+Our longest expedition was to the piece of waste ground which had been
+allotted to us for a burial ground, a domain the shells were always
+threatening to plough up. This graveyard increased considerably. As it
+takes a man eight hours to dig a grave for his brother man, one had to
+set a numerous gang to work all day, to ensure a place for each corpse.
+
+Sometimes we went into the wooden shed which served as our mortuary.
+Pere Duval, the oldest of our orderlies, sewed there all day, making
+shrouds of coarse linen for "his dead."
+
+They were laid in the earth carefully, side by side, their feet
+together, their hands crossed on their breasts, when indeed they still
+possessed hands and feet.... Duval also looked after the human debris,
+and gave it decent sepulture.
+
+Thus our function was not only to tend the living, but also to honour
+the dead. The care of what was magniloquently termed their "estate" fell
+to our manager, S----. It was he who put into a little canvas bag all
+the papers and small possessions found on the victims. He devoted days
+and nights to a kind of funereal bureaucracy, inevitable even under the
+fire of the enemy. His occupation, moreover, was not exempt from moral
+difficulties. Thus he found in the pocket of one dead man a woman's card
+which it was impossible to send on to his family, and in another case, a
+collection of songs of such a nature that after due deliberation it was
+decided to burn them.
+
+Let us purify the memories of our martyrs!
+
+We had several German wounded to attend. One of these, whose leg I had
+to take off, overwhelmed me with thanks in his native tongue; he had
+lain for six days on ground over which artillery played unceasingly, and
+contemplated his return to life and the care bestowed on him with a kind
+of stupefaction.
+
+Another, who had a shattered arm, gave us a good deal of trouble by his
+amazing uncleanliness. Before giving him the anaesthetic, the orderly
+took from his mouth a set of false teeth, which he confessed he had not
+removed for several months, and which exhaled an unimaginable stench.
+
+I remember, too, a little fair-haired chap of rather chilly demeanour,
+who suddenly said "Good-bye" to me with lips that quivered like those of
+a child about to cry.
+
+The interpreter from Headquarters, my friend C----, came to see them all
+as soon as they had got over their stupor, and interrogated them with
+placid patience, comparing all their statements in order to glean some
+trustworthy indication.
+
+Thus days and nights passed by in ceaseless toil, under a perpetual
+menace, in the midst of an ever-growing fatigue which gave things the
+substance and aspects they take on in a nightmare.
+
+The very monotony of this existence was made up of a thousand dramatic
+details, each of which would have been an event in normal life. I still
+see, as through the mists of a dream, the orderly of a dying captain
+sobbing at his bedside and covering his hands with kisses. I still
+hear the little lad whose life blood had ebbed away, saying to me in
+imploring tones: "Save me, Doctor! Save me for my mother!"... and I
+think a man must have heard such words in such a place to understand
+them aright, I think that every day this man must gain a stricter, a
+more precise, a more pathetic idea of suffering and of death.
+
+One Sunday evening, the bombardment was renewed with extraordinary
+violence. We had just sent off General S----, who was smoking on his
+stretcher, and chatting calmly and cheerfully; I was operating on an
+infantryman who had deep wounds in his arms and thighs. Suddenly there
+was a great commotion. A hurricane of shells fell upon the hospital.
+I heard a crash which shook the ground and the walls violently, then
+hurried footsteps and cries in the passage.
+
+I looked at the man sleeping and breathing heavily, and I almost envied
+his forgetfulness of all things, the dissolution of his being in a
+darkness so akin to liberating death. My task completed, I went out to
+view the damage.
+
+A shell had fallen on an angle of the building, blowing in the windows
+of three wards, scattering stones in all directions, and riddling walls
+and ceilings with large fragments of metal. The wounded were moaning,
+shrouded in acrid smoke. They were lying so close to the ground that
+they had been struck only by plaster and splinters of glass; but
+the shock had been so great that nearly all of them died within the
+following hour.
+
+The next day it was decided that we should change our domicile, and we
+made ready to carry off our wounded and remove our hospital to a point
+rather more distant. It was a very clear day. In front of us, the main
+road was covered with men, whom motor vehicles were depositing in groups
+every minute. We were finishing our final operations and looking out
+occasionally at these men gathered in the sun, on the slopes and in the
+ditches. At about one o'clock in the afternoon the air was rent by
+the shriek of high explosives and some shells fell in the midst of the
+groups. We saw them disperse through the yellowish smoke, and go to
+lie down a little farther off in the fields. Some did not even stir.
+Stretcher-bearers came up at once, running across the meadow, and
+brought us two dead men, and nine wounded, who were laid on the
+operating-table.
+
+As we tended them during the following hour we looked anxiously at the
+knots of men who remained in the open, and gradually increased, and we
+asked whether they would not soon go. But there they stayed, and again
+we heard the dull growl of the discharge, then the whistling overhead,
+and the explosions of some dozen shells falling upon the men. Crowding
+to the window, we watched the massacre, and waited to receive the
+victims. My colleague M----drew my attention to a soldier who was
+running up the grassy slope on the other side of the road, and whom the
+shells seemed to be pursuing.
+
+These were the last wounded we received in the suburb of G----. Three
+hours afterwards, we took up the same life and the same labours again,
+some way off, for many weeks more....
+
+Thus things went on, until the day when we, in our turn, were carried
+off by the automobiles of the Grand' Route, and landed on the banks of a
+fair river in a village where there were trees in blossom, and where the
+next morning we were awakened by the sound of bells and the voices of
+women.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SACRIFICE
+
+
+We had had all the windows opened. From their beds, the wounded could
+see, through the dancing waves of heat, the heights of Berru and Nogent
+l'Abbesse, the towers of the Cathedral, still crouching like a dying
+lion in the middle of the plain of Reims, and the chalky lines of the
+trenches intersecting the landscape.
+
+A kind of torpor seemed to hang over the battle-field. Sometimes, a
+perpendicular column of smoke rose up, in the motionless distance, and
+the detonation reached us a little while afterwards, as if astray, and
+ashamed of outraging the radiant silence.
+
+It was one of the fine days of the summer of 1915, one of those days
+when the supreme indifference of Nature makes one feel the burden of
+war more cruelly, when the beauty of the sky seems to proclaim its
+remoteness from the anguish of the human heart.
+
+We had finished our morning round when an ambulance drew up at the
+entrance.
+
+"Doctor on duty!"
+
+I went down the steps. The chauffeur explained:
+
+"There are three slightly wounded men. I am going to take on further,
+and then there are some severely wounded..."
+
+He opened the back of his car. On one side three soldiers were seated,
+dozing. On the other, there were stretchers, and I saw the feet of the
+men lying upon them. Then, from the depths of the vehicle came a low,
+grave, uncertain voice which said:
+
+"I am one of the severely wounded, Monsieur."
+
+He was a lad rather than a man. He had a little soft down on his chin,
+a well-cut aquiline nose, dark eyes to which extreme weakness gave an
+appearance of exaggerated size, and the grey pallor of those who have
+lost much blood.
+
+"Oh! how tired I am!" he said.
+
+He held on to the stretcher with both hands as he was carried up the
+steps. He raised his head a little, gave a glance full of astonishment,
+distress, and lassitude at the green trees, the smiling hills, the
+glowing horizon, and then he found himself inside the house.
+
+Here begins the story of Gaston Leglise. It is a modest story and a very
+sad story; but indeed, are there any stories now in the world that are
+not sad?
+
+I will tell it day by day, as we lived it, as it is graven in my memory,
+and as it is graven in your memory and in your flesh, my friend Leglise.
+
+Leglise only had a whiff of chloroform, and he fell at once into a sleep
+closely akin to death.
+
+"Let us make haste," said the head doctor. "We shall have the poor boy
+dying on the table."
+
+Then he shook his head, adding:
+
+"Both knees! Both knees! What a future!"
+
+The burden of experience is a sorrowful one. It is always sorrowful to
+have sufficient memory to discern the future.
+
+Small splinters from a grenade make very little wounds in a man's legs;
+but great disorders may enter by way of those little wounds, and the
+knee is such a complicated, delicate marvel!
+
+Corporal Leglise is in bed now. He breathes with difficulty, and catches
+his breath now and again like a person who has been sobbing. He looks
+about him languidly, and hardly seems to have made up his mind to live.
+He contemplates the bottle of serum, the tubes, the needles, all the
+apparatus set in motion to revive his fluttering heart, and he seems
+bowed down by grief. He wants something to drink, but he must not have
+anything yet; he wants to sleep, but we have to deny sleep to those who
+need it most; he wants to die perhaps, and we will not let him.
+
+He sees again the listening post where he spent the night, in advance of
+all his comrades. He sees again the narrow doorway bordered by sandbags
+through which he came out at dawn to breathe the cold air and look at
+the sky from the bottom of the communication-trench. All was quiet, and
+the early summer morning was sweet even in the depths of the trench.
+But some one was watching and listening for the faint sound of his
+footsteps. An invisible hand hurled a bomb. He rushed back to the door;
+but his pack was on his back, and he was caught in the aperture like
+a rat in a trap. The air was rent by the detonation, and his legs
+were rent, like the pure air, like the summer morning, like the lovely
+silence.
+
+The days pass, and once more, the coursing blood begins to make the
+vessels of the neck throb, to tinge the lips, and give depth and
+brilliance to the eye.
+
+Death, which had overrun the whole body like an invader, retired,
+yielding ground by degrees; but it has halted now, and makes a stand at
+the legs; these it will not relinquish; it demands something by way of
+spoil; it will not be baulked of its prey entirely.
+
+We fight for the portion Death has chosen. The wounded Corporal looks on
+at our labours and our efforts, like a poor man who has placed his cause
+in the hands of a knight, and who can only be a spectator of the combat,
+can only pray and wait.
+
+We shall have to give the monster a share; one of the legs must go. Now
+another struggle begins with the man himself. Several times a day I go
+and sit by his bed. All our attempts at conversation break down one by
+one. We always end in the same silence and anxiety. To-day Leglise said
+to me:
+
+"Oh! I know quite well what you're thinking about!"
+
+As I made no answer, he intreated:
+
+"Perhaps we could wait a little longer? Perhaps to-morrow I may be
+better..."
+
+Then suddenly, in great confusion:
+
+"Forgive me. I do trust you all. I know what you do is necessary. But
+perhaps it will not be too late in two or three days...."
+
+Two or three days! We will see to-morrow.
+
+The nights are terribly hot; I suffer for his sake.
+
+I come to see him in the evening for the last time, and encourage him to
+sleep. But his eyes are wide open in the night and I feel that they are
+anxiously fixed on mine.
+
+Fever makes his voice tremble.
+
+"How can I sleep with all the things I am thinking about?"
+
+Then he adds faintly:
+
+"Must you? Must you?"
+
+The darkness gives me courage, and I nod my head: "Yes!"
+
+As I finish his dressings, I speak from the depths of my heart:
+
+"Leglise, we will put you to sleep to-morrow. We will make an
+examination without letting you suffer, and we will do what is
+necessary."
+
+"I know quite well that you will take it off."
+
+"We shall do what we must do."
+
+I divine that the corners of his mouth are drawn down a little, and that
+his lips are quivering. He thinks aloud:
+
+"If only the other leg was all right!"
+
+I have been thinking of that too, but I pretend not to have heard.
+Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
+
+I spend part of the afternoon sewing pieces of waterproof stuff
+together. He asks me:
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+"I am making you a mask, to give you ether."
+
+"Thank you; I can't bear the smell of chloroform."
+
+I answer "Yes, that's why." The real reason is that we are not sure he
+could bear the brutal chloroform, in his present state.
+
+Leglise's leg was taken off at the thigh this morning. He was still
+unconscious when we carried him into the dark room to examine his other
+leg under the X-rays.
+
+He was already beginning to moan and to open his eyes, and the
+radiographer was not hurrying. I did all I could to hasten the business,
+and to get him back into his bed. Thus he regained consciousness in
+bright sunshine.
+
+What would he, who once again was so close to the dark kingdom, have
+thought if he had awakened in a gloom peopled by shadows, full of
+whisperings, sparks and flashes of light?
+
+As soon as he could speak, he said to me:
+
+"You have cut off my leg?"
+
+I made a sign. His eyes filled, and as his head was low, the great tears
+trickled on to the pillow.
+
+To-day he is calmer. The first dressings were very painful. He looked at
+the raw, bloody, oozing stump, trembling, and said:
+
+"It looks pretty horrible!"
+
+We took so many precautions that now he is refreshed for a few hours.
+
+"They say you are to have the Military Medal," the head doctor told him.
+
+Leglise confided to me later, with some hesitation:
+
+"I don't suppose they would really give me the medal!"
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"I was punished; one of my men had some buttons off his overcoat."
+
+Oh, my friend, scrupulous lad, could I love my countrymen if they could
+remember those wretched buttons for an instant?
+
+"My men!" he said gravely. I look at his narrow chest, his thin face,
+his boyish forehead with the serious furrow on it of one who accepts
+all responsibilities, and I do not know how to show him my respect and
+affection.
+
+Leglise's fears were baseless. General G----arrived just now. I met him
+on the terrace. His face pleased me. It was refined and intelligent.
+
+"I have come to see Corporal Leglise," he said.
+
+I took him into the ward, full of wounded men, and he at once went
+towards Leglise unhesitatingly, as if he knew him perfectly.
+
+"How are you?" he asked, taking the young man's hand.
+
+"Mon General, they've cut off my leg..."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know, my poor fellow. And I have brought you the Military
+Medal."
+
+He pinned it on to Leglise's shirt, and kissed my friend on both cheeks,
+simply and affectionately.
+
+Then he talked to him again for a few minutes.
+
+I was greatly pleased. Really, this General is one of the right sort.
+
+The medal has been wrapped in a bit of muslin, so that the flies may not
+soil it, and hung on the wall over the bed. It seems to be watching over
+the wounded man, to be looking on at what is happening. Unfortunately,
+what it sees is sad enough. The right leg, the only leg, is giving us
+trouble now. The knee is diseased, it is in a very bad state, and all
+we have done to save it seems to have been in vain. Then a sore has
+appeared on the back, and then another sore. Every morning, we pass from
+one misery to another, telling the beads of suffering in due order.
+
+So a man does not die of pain, or Leglise would certainly be dead. I
+see him still, opening his eyes desperately and checking the scream that
+rises to his lips. Oh! I thought indeed that he was going to die. But
+his agony demands full endurance; it does not even stupefy those it
+assails.
+
+I call on every one for help.
+
+"Genest, Barrassin, Prevot, come, all of you."
+
+Yes, let ten of us do our best if necessary, to support Leglise, to hold
+him, to soothe him. A minute of his endurance is equal to ten years of
+such effort as ours.
+
+Alas! were there a hundred of us he would still have to bear the
+heaviest burden alone.
+
+All humanity at this hour is bearing a very cruel burden. Every minute
+aggravates its sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its aid?
+
+We made an examination of the wounded man, together with our chief, who
+muttered almost inaudibly between his teeth:
+
+"He must be prepared for another sacrifice."
+
+Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely consummated.
+
+But Leglise understood. He no longer weeps. He has the weary and
+somewhat bewildered look of the man who is rowing against the storm.
+I steal a look at him, and he says at once in a clear, calm, resolute
+voice:
+
+"I would much rather die."
+
+I go into the garden. It is a brilliant morning, but I can see nothing,
+I want to see nothing. I repeat as I walk to and fro:
+
+"He would much rather die."
+
+And I ask despairingly whether he is not right perhaps.
+
+All the poplars rustle softly. With one voice, the voice of Summer
+itself, they say: "No! No! He is not right!"
+
+A little beetle crosses the path before me. I step on it
+unintentionally, but it flies away in desperate haste. It too has
+answered in its own way: "No, really, your friend is not right."
+
+"Tell him he is wrong," sing the swarm of insects that buzz about the
+lime-tree.
+
+And even a loud roar from the guns that travels across the landscape
+seems to say gruffly: "He is wrong! He is wrong!"
+
+During the evening the chief came back to see Leglise, who said to him
+with the same mournful gravity:
+
+"No, I won't, Monsieur, I would rather die."
+
+We go down into the garden, and the chief says a strange thing to me:
+
+"Try to convince him. I begin at last to feel ashamed of demanding such
+a sacrifice from him."
+
+And I too... am I not ashamed?
+
+I consult the warm, star-decked night; I am quite sure now that he is
+wrong, but I don't know how to tell him so. What can I offer him in
+exchange for the thing I am about to ask him? Where shall I find the
+words that induce a man to live? Oh you, all things around me, tell me,
+repeat to me that it is sweet to live, even with a body so grievously
+mutilated.
+
+This morning I extracted a little projectile from one of his wounds.
+He secretly concluded that this would perhaps make the great operation
+unnecessary, and it hurt me to see his joy. I could not leave him this
+satisfaction.
+
+The struggle began again; this time it was desperate. For we have no
+time to lose. Every hour of delay exhausts our man further. A few days
+more, and there will be no choice open to him: only death, after a long
+ordeal....
+
+He repeats:
+
+"I am not afraid, but I would rather die."
+
+Then I talk to him as if I were the advocate of Life. Who gave me this
+right? Who gave me eloquence? The things I said were just the right
+things, and they came so readily that now and then I was afraid of
+holding out so sure a promise of a life I am not certain I can preserve,
+of guaranteeing a future that is not in man's hands.
+
+Gradually, I feel his resistance weakening. There is something in
+Leglise which involuntarily sides with me and pleads with me. There
+are moments when he does not know what to say, and formulates trivial
+objections, just because there are others so much weightier.
+
+"I live with my mother," he says. "I am twenty years old. What work is
+there for a cripple? Ought I to live to suffer poverty and misery?"
+
+"Leglise, all France owes you too much, she would blush not to pay her
+debt."
+
+And I promise again, in the name of our country, sure that she will
+never fall short of what I undertake for her. The whole French nation is
+behind me at this moment, silently ratifying my promise.
+
+We are at the edge of the terrace; evening has come. I hold his burning
+wrist in which the feeble pulse beats with exhausted fury. The night
+is so beautiful, so beautiful! Rockets rise above the hills, and fall
+slowly bathing the horizon in silvery rays. The lightning of the guns
+flashes furtively, like a winking eye. In spite of all this, in spite of
+war, the night is like waters dark and divine. Leglise breathes it in to
+his wasted breast in long draughts, and says:
+
+"Oh, I don't know, I don't know!... Wait another day, please,
+please...."
+
+We waited three whole days, and then Leglise gave in. "Well, do what you
+must. Do what you like."
+
+On the morning of the operation, he asked to be carried down to the ward
+by the steps into the park. I went with him, and I saw him looking at
+all things round him, as if taking them to witness.
+
+If only, only it is not too late!
+
+Again he was laid on the table. Again we cut through flesh and bones.
+The second leg was amputated at the thigh.
+
+I took him in my arms to lay him on his bed, and he was so light, so
+light....
+
+This time when he woke he asked no question. But I saw his hands groping
+to feel where his body ended.
+
+A few days have passed since the operation. We have done all it was
+humanly possible to do, and Leglise comes back to life with a kind of
+bewilderment.
+
+"I thought I should have died," he said to me this morning, while I was
+encouraging him to eat.
+
+He added:
+
+"When I went down to the operation-ward, I looked well at everything,
+and I thought it was for the last time."
+
+"Look, dear boy. Everything is just the same, just as beautiful as
+ever."
+
+"Oh!" he says, going back to his memories, "I had made up my mind to
+die."
+
+To make up one's mind to die is to take a certain resolution, in the
+hope of becoming quieter, calmer, and less unhappy. The man who makes
+up his mind to die severs a good many ties, and indeed actually dies to
+some extent.
+
+With secret anxiety, I say gently, as if I were asking a question:
+
+"It is always good to eat, to drink, to breathe, to see the light. ..."
+
+He does not answer. He is dreaming. I spoke too soon. I go away, still
+anxious.
+
+We have some bad moments yet, but the fever gradually abates. I have an
+impression that Leglise bears his pain more resolutely, like one who has
+given all he had to give, and fears nothing further.
+
+When I have finished the dressing, I turned him over on his side, to
+ease his sore back. He smiled for the first time this morning, saying:
+
+"I have already gained something by getting rid of my legs. I can lie on
+my side now."
+
+But he cannot balance himself well; he is afraid of falling.
+
+Think of him, and you will be afraid with him and for him.
+
+Sometimes he goes to sleep in broad daylight and dozes for a few
+minutes. He has shrunk to the size of a child. I lay a piece of gauze
+over his face, as one does to a child, to keep the flies off. I bring
+him a little bottle of Eau de Cologne and a fan, they help him to bear
+the final assaults of the fever.
+
+He begins to smoke again. We smoke together on the terrace, where I have
+had his bed brought. I show him the garden and say: "In a few days, I
+will carry you down into the garden."
+
+ He is anxious about his neighbours, asks their names, and
+inquires about their wounds. For each one he has a compassionate word
+that comes from the depths of his being. He says to me:
+
+"I hear that little Camus is dead. Poor Camus!"
+
+His eyes fill with tears. I was almost glad to see them. He had not
+cried for so long. He adds:
+
+"Excuse me, I used to see Camus sometimes. It's so sad."
+
+He becomes extraordinarily sensitive. He is touched by all he
+sees around him, by the sufferings of others, by their individual
+misfortunes. He vibrates like an elect soul, exalted by a great crisis.
+
+When he speaks of his own case, it is always to make light of his
+misfortune:
+
+"Dumont got it in the belly. Ah, it's lucky for me that none of my
+organs are touched; I can't complain."
+
+I watch him with admiration, but I am waiting for something more,
+something more....
+
+His chief crony is Legrand.
+
+Legrand is a stonemason with a face like a young girl. He has lost a big
+piece of his skull. He has also lost the use of language, and we teach
+him words, as to a baby. He is beginning to get up now, and he hovers
+round Leglise's bed to perform little services for him. He tries to
+master his rebellious tongue, but failing in the attempt, he smiles, and
+expresses himself with a limpid glance, full of intelligence.
+
+Leglise pities him too:
+
+"It must be wretched not to be able to speak."
+
+To-day we laughed, yes, indeed, we laughed heartily, Leglise, the
+orderlies and I.
+
+We were talking of his future pension while the dressings were being
+prepared, and someone said to him:
+
+"You will live like a little man of means."
+
+Leglise looked at his body and answered:
+
+"Oh, yes, a little man, a very little man."
+
+The dressing went off very well. To make our task easier, Leglise
+suggested that he should hold on to the head of the bed with both hands
+and throw himself back on his shoulders, holding his stumps up in the
+air. It was a terrible, an unimaginable sight; but he began to laugh,
+and the spectacle became comic. We all laughed. But the dressing was
+easy and was quickly finished.
+
+The stumps are healing healthily. In the afternoon, he sits up in bed.
+He begins to read and to smoke, chatting to his companions.
+
+I explain to him how he will be able to walk with artificial legs. He
+jokes again:
+
+"I was rather short before; but now I can be just the height I choose."
+
+I bring him some cigarettes that had been sent me for him, some sweets
+and dainties. He makes a sign that he wants to whisper to me, and says
+very softly:
+
+"I have far too many things. But Legrand is very badly off; his home
+is in the invaded district, and he has nothing, they can't send him
+anything."
+
+I understand. I come back presently with a packet in which there are
+tobacco, some good cigarettes, and also a little note....
+
+"Here is something for Legrand. You must give it to him. I'm off."
+
+In the afternoon I find Leglise troubled and perplexed.
+
+"I can't give all this to Legrand myself, he would be offended."
+
+So then we have to devise a discreet method of presentation.
+
+It takes some minutes. He invents romantic possibilities. He becomes
+flushed, animated, interested.
+
+"Think," I say, "find a way. Give it to him yourself, from some one or
+other."
+
+But Leglise is too much afraid of wounding Legrand's susceptibilities.
+He ruminates on the matter till evening.
+
+The little parcel is at the head of Legrand's bed. Leglise calls my
+attention to it with his chin, and whispers:
+
+"I found some one to give it to him. He doesn't know who sent it. He has
+made all sorts of guesses; it is very amusing!" Oh, Leglise, can it be
+that there is still something amusing, and that it is to be kind? Isn't
+this alone enough to make it worth while to live?
+
+So now we have a great secret between us. All the morning, as I come and
+go in the ward, he looks at me meaningly, and smiles to himself. Legrand
+gravely offers me a cigarette; Leglise finds it hard not to burst out
+laughing. But he keeps his counsel.
+
+The orderlies have put him on a neighbouring bed while they make his.
+He stays there very quietly, his bandaged stumps in view, and sings
+a little song, like a child's cradle-song. Then, all of a sudden, he
+begins to cry, sobbing aloud.
+
+I put my arm round him and ask anxiously: "Why? What is the matter?"
+
+Then he answers in a broken voice: "I am crying with joy and
+thankfulness."
+
+Oh! I did not expect so much. But I am very happy, much comforted. I
+kiss him, he kisses me, and I think I cried a little too.
+
+I have wrapped him in a flannel dressing-gown, and I carry him in my
+arms. I go down the steps to the park very carefully, like a mother
+carrying her new-born babe for the first time, and I call out: "An
+arm-chair! An arm-chair."
+
+He clings to my neck as I walk, and says in some confusion:
+
+"I shall tire you."
+
+No indeed! I am too well pleased. I would not let any one take my place.
+The arm-chair has been set under the trees, near a grove. I deposit
+Leglise among the cushions. They bring him a kepi. He breathes the scent
+of green things, of the newly mown lawns, of the warm gravel. He looks
+at the facade of the mansion, and says:
+
+"I had not even seen the place where I very nearly died."
+
+All the wounded who are walking about come and visit him; they almost
+seem to be paying him homage. He talks to them with a cordial authority.
+Is he not the chief among them, in virtue of his sufferings and his
+sacrifice?
+
+Some one in the ward was talking this morning of love and marriage, and
+a home.
+
+I glanced at Leglise now and then; he seemed to be dreaming and he
+murmured:
+
+"Oh, for me, now..."
+
+Then I told him something I knew: I know young girls who have sworn to
+marry only a mutilated man. Well, we must believe in the vows of these
+young girls. France is a country richer in warmth of heart than in any
+other virtue. It is a blessed duty to give happiness to those who have
+sacrificed so much. And a thousand hearts, the generous hearts of women,
+applaud me at this moment.
+
+Leglise listens, shaking his head. He does not venture to say "No."
+
+Leglise has not only the Military Medal, but also the War Cross. The
+notice has just come. He reads it with blushes.
+
+"I shall never dare to show this," he says; "it is a good deal
+exaggerated."
+
+He hands me the paper, which states, in substance, that Corporal Leglise
+behaved with great gallantry under a hail of bombs, and that his left
+leg has been amputated.
+
+"I didn't behave with great gallantry," he says; "I was at my post,
+that's all. As to the bombs, I only got one."
+
+I reject this point of view summarily.
+
+"Wasn't it a gallant act to go to that advanced post, so near the enemy,
+all alone, at the head of all the Frenchmen? Weren't they all behind
+you, to the very end of the country, right away to the Pyrenees? Did
+they not all rely on your coolness, your keen sight, your vigilance? You
+were only hit by one bomb, but I think you might have had several, and
+still be with us. And besides, the notice, far from being exaggerated,
+is really insufficient; it says you have lost a leg, whereas you have
+lost two! It seems to me that this fully compensates for anything
+excessive with regard to the bombs."
+
+"That's true!" agrees Leglise, laughing. "But I don't want to be made
+out a hero."
+
+"My good lad, people won't ask what you think before they appreciate and
+honour you. It will be quite enough to look at your body."
+
+Then we had to part, for the war goes on, and every day there are fresh
+wounded.
+
+Leglise left us nearly cured. He left with some comrades, and he was not
+the least lively of the group.
+
+"I was the most severely wounded man in the train," he wrote to me, not
+without a certain pride.
+
+Since then, Leglise has written to me often. His letters breathe a
+contented calm. I receive them among the vicissitudes of the campaign;
+on the highways, in wards where other wounded men are moaning, in fields
+scoured by the gallop of the cannonade.
+
+And always something beside me murmurs, mutely:
+
+"You see, you see, he was wrong when he said he would rather die."
+
+I am convinced of it, and this is why I have told your story. You will
+forgive me, won't you, Leglise, my friend?
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THIRD SYMPHONY
+
+
+Every morning the stretcher-bearers brought Vize-Feldwebel Spat down to
+the dressing ward, and his appearance always introduced a certain chill
+in the atmosphere.
+
+There are some German wounded whom kind treatment, suffering, or some
+more obscure agency move to composition with the enemy, and who receive
+what we do for them with a certain amount of gratitude. Spat was not
+one of these. For weeks we had made strenuous efforts to snatch him
+from death, and then to alleviate his sufferings, without eliciting the
+slightest sign of satisfaction from him, or receiving the least word of
+thanks.
+
+He could speak a little French, which he utilised strictly for his
+material wants, to say, for instance, "A little more cotton-wool under
+the foot, Monsieur," or, "Have I any fever to-day?"
+
+Apart from this, he always showed us the same icy face, the same pale,
+hard eyes, enframed by colourless lashes. We gathered, from certain
+indications, that the man was intelligent and well educated; but he was
+obviously under the domination of a lively hatred, and a strict sense of
+his own dignity.
+
+He bore pain bravely, and like one who makes it a point of honour to
+repress the most excusable reactions of the martyred flesh. I do not
+remember ever hearing him cry out, though this would have seemed to me
+natural enough, and would by no means have lowered Monsieur Spat in my
+opinion. All I ever heard from him was a stifled moan, the dull panting
+of the woodman as he swings his axe.
+
+One day we were obliged to give him an anaesthetic in order to make
+incisions in the wounds in his leg; he turned very red and said, in a
+tone that was almost imploring: "You won't cut it off, gentlemen, will
+you?" But no sooner did he regain consciousness than he at once resumed
+his attitude of stiff hostility.
+
+After a time, I ceased to believe mat his features could ever express
+anything but this repressed animosity. I was undeceived by an unforeseen
+incident.
+
+The habit of whistling between one's teeth is a token, with me as with
+many other persons, of a certain absorption. It is perhaps rather a
+vulgar habit, but I often feel impelled to whistle, especially when I
+have a serious piece of work in hand.
+
+One morning accordingly, I was finishing Vize-Feldwebel Spat's dressing,
+and whistling something at random. I was looking at his leg, and was
+paying no attention to his face, when I suddenly became curiously aware
+that the look he had fixed upon me had changed in quality, and I raised
+my eyes.
+
+Certainly, something very extraordinary had taken place: the German's
+face glowed with a kind of warmth and contentment, and was so smiling
+and radiant that I hardly recognised it. I could scarcely believe
+that he had been able to improvise this face, which was sensitive and
+trustful, out of the features he generally showed us.
+
+"Tell me, Monsieur," he murmured, "it's the Third Symphony, isn't it,
+that you are... what do you call it?--yes... whistling."
+
+First, I stopped whistling. Then I answered: "Yes, I believe it is the
+Third Symphony"; then I remained silent and confused.
+
+A slender bridge had just been flung across the abyss.
+
+The thing lasted for a few seconds, and I was still dreaming of it when
+once more I felt an icy, irrevocable shadow falling upon me--the hostile
+glance of Herr Spat.
+
+
+
+
+
+GRACE
+
+
+It is a common saying that all men are equal in the presence of
+suffering, but I know very well that this is not true.
+
+Auger! Auger! humble basket-maker of La Charente, who are you, you who
+seem able to suffer without being unhappy? Why are you touched with
+grace, whereas Gregoire is not? Why are you the prince of a world in
+which Gregoire is merely a pariah?
+
+Kind ladies who pass through the wards where the wounded lie, and give
+them cigarettes and sweet-meats, come with me.
+
+We will go through the large ward on the first floor, where the windows
+are caressed by the boughs of chestnut-trees. I will not point out
+Auger, you will give him the lion's share of the cigarettes and sweets
+of your own accord; but if I don't point out Gregoire, you will leave
+without, noticing him, and he will get no sweets, and will have nothing
+to smoke.
+
+It is not because of this that I call Gregoire a pariah. It is because
+of a much sadder and more intimate thing... Gregoire lacks endurance, he
+is not what we call a good patient.
+
+In a general way those who tend the wounded call the men who do not give
+them much trouble "good patients." Judged by this standard, every one in
+the hospital will tell you that Gregoire is not a good patient.
+
+All day long, he lies on his left side, because of his wound, and stares
+at the wall. I said to him a day or two after he came:
+
+"I am going to move you and put you over in the other corner; there you
+will be able to see your comrades."
+
+He answered, in his dull, surly voice:
+
+"It's not worth while. I'm all right here."
+
+"But you can see nothing but the wall."
+
+"That's quite enough."
+
+Scarcely have the stretcher-bearers touched his bed, when Gregoire
+begins to cry out in a doleful, irritable tone:
+
+"Ah! don't shake me like that! Ah, you mustn't touch me."
+
+The stretcher-bearers I give him are very gentle fellows, and he always
+has the same: Paffin, a fat shoe-maker with a stammer, and Monsieur
+Bouin, a professor of mathematics, with a grey beard and very precise
+movements.
+
+They take hold of Gregoire most carefully to lay him on the stretcher.
+The wounded man criticises all their movements peevishly:
+
+"Ah! don't turn me over like that. And you must hold my leg better than
+that!"
+
+The sweat breaks out on Baffin's face. Monsieur Bouin's eye-glasses fall
+off. At last they bring the patient along.
+
+As soon as he comes into the dressing ward, Gregoire is pale and
+perspiring. His harsh tawny beard quivers, hair by hair. I divine all
+this, and say a few words of encouragement to him from afar.
+
+"I shan't be long with you this morning, Gregoire. You won't have time
+to say 'oof'!"
+
+He preserves a sulky silence, full of reservations. He looks like a
+condemned criminal awaiting execution. He is so pre-occupied that he
+does not even answer when the sarcastic Sergeant says as he passes him:
+
+"Ah! here's our grouser."
+
+At last he is laid on the table which the wounded men call the
+"billiard-table."
+
+Then, things become very trying. I feel at once that whatever I do,
+Gregoire will suffer. I uncover the wound in his thigh, and he screams.
+I wash the wound carefully, and he screams. I probe the wound, from
+which I remove small particles of bone, very gently, and he utters
+unimaginable yells. I see his tongue trembling in his open mouth. His
+hands tremble in the hands that hold them, I have an impression that
+every fibre of his body trembles, that the raw flesh of the wound
+trembles and retracts. In spite of my determination, this misery affects
+me, and I wonder whether I too shall begin to tremble sympathetically. I
+say:
+
+"Try to be patient, my poor Gregoire."
+
+He replies in a voice hoarse with pain and terror: "I can't help it."
+
+I add, just to say something: "Courage, a little courage."
+
+He does not even answer, and I feel that to exhort him to show courage,
+is to recommend an impossible thing, as if I were to advise him to have
+black eyes instead of his pale blue ones.
+
+The dressing is completed in an atmosphere of general discomfort.
+Nothing could persuade me that Gregoire does not cordially detest me at
+this moment. While they are carrying him away, I ask myself bitterly why
+Gregoire is so deficient in grace, why he cannot suffer decently?
+
+The Sergeant says, as he sponges the table: "He's working against one
+all the time." Well, the Sergeant is wrong. Gregoire is not deliberately
+hostile. Sometimes I divine, when he knits his brows, that he is making
+an effort to resist suffering, to meet it with a stouter and more
+cheerful heart. But he does not know how to set about it.
+
+If you were asked to lift a railway-engine, you would perhaps make an
+effort; but you would do so without confidence and without success. So
+you must not say hard things of Gregoire.
+
+Gregoire is unable to bear suffering, just as one is unable to talk an
+unknown language. And, then, it is easier to learn Chinese than to learn
+the art of suffering.
+
+When I say that he is unable to bear suffering, I really mean that he
+has to suffer a great deal more than others.... I know the human body,
+and I cannot be deceived as to certain signs.
+
+Gregoire begins very badly. He reminds one of those children who
+have such a terror of dogs that they are bound to be bitten. Gregoire
+trembles at once. The dogs of pain throw themselves upon this
+defenceless man and pull him down.
+
+A great load of misery is heavy for a man to bear alone, but it is
+supportable when he is helped. Unfortunately Gregoire has no friends. He
+does nothing to obtain them, it almost seems as if he did not want any.
+
+He is not coarse, noisy and foul-mouthed, like the rascal Groult who
+amuses the whole ward. He is only dull and reserved.
+
+He does not often say "Thank you" when he is offered something, and many
+touchy people take offence at this.
+
+When I sit down by his bed, he gives no sign of any pleasure at my
+visit. I ask him:
+
+"What was your business in civil life?"
+
+He does not answer immediately. At last he says: "Odd jobs; I carried
+and loaded here and there."
+
+"Are you married?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you any children?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How many?"
+
+"Three."
+
+The conversation languishes. I get up and say: "Good-bye till to-morrow,
+Gregoire."
+
+"Ah! you will hurt me again to-morrow."
+
+I reassure him, or at least I try to reassure him. Then, that I may not
+go away leaving a bad impression, I ask:
+
+"How did you get wounded?"
+
+"Well, down there in the plain, with the others...."
+
+That is all. I go away. Gregoire's eyes follow me for a moment, and I
+cannot even say whether he is pleased or annoyed by my visit.
+
+Good-bye, poor Gregoire. I cross the ward and go to sit down by Auger.
+
+Auger is busy writing up his "book."
+
+It is a big ledger some one has given him, in which he notes the
+important events of his life.
+
+Auger writes a round schoolboy hand. In fact, he can just write
+sufficiently well for his needs, I might almost say for his pleasure.
+
+"Would you care to look at my book?" he says, and he hands it to me with
+the air of a man who has no secrets.
+
+Auger receives many letters, and he copies them out carefully,
+especially when they are fine letters, full of generous sentiments. His
+lieutenant, for instance, wrote him a remarkable letter.
+
+He also copies into his book the letters he writes to his wife and his
+little girl. Then he notes the incidents of the day: "Wound dressed at
+10 o'clock. The pus is diminishing. After dinner Madame la Princesse
+Moreau paid us a visit, and distributed caps all round; I got a fine
+green one. The little chap who had such a bad wound in the belly died at
+2 o'clock...."
+
+Auger closes his book and puts it back under his bolster.
+
+He has a face that it does one good to look at. His complexion is warm
+and fresh; his hair stiff and rather curly. He has a youthful moustache,
+a well-shaped chin, with a lively dimple in the middle, and eyes which
+seem to be looking out on a smiling landscape, gay with sunshine and
+running waters.
+
+"I am getting on splendidly," he says with great satisfaction. "Would
+you like to see Mariette?"
+
+He lifts up the sheet, and I see the apparatus in which we have placed
+the stump of his leg. It makes a kind of big white doll, which he takes
+in both hands with a laugh, and to which he has given the playful name
+of "Mariette."
+
+Auger was a sapper in the Engineers. A shell broke his thigh and tore
+off his foot. But as the foot was still hanging by a strip of flesh,
+Auger took out his pocket-knife, and got rid of it. Then he said to his
+terror-stricken comrades: "Well, boys, that's all right. It might have
+been worse. Now carry me somewhere out of this."
+
+"Did you suffer terribly?" I asked him.
+
+"Well, Monsieur, not as much as you might think. Honestly, it did not
+hurt so very, very much. Afterwards, indeed, the pain was pretty bad."
+
+I understand why every one is fond of Auger. It is because he is
+reassuring. Seeing him and listening to him one opines that suffering
+is not such a horrible thing after all. Those who live far from the
+battle-field, and visit hospitals to get a whiff of the war, look at
+Auger and go away well satisfied with everything: current events, him,
+and themselves. They are persuaded that the country is well defended,
+that our soldiers are brave, and that wounds and mutilations, though
+they may be serious things, are not unbearable.
+
+Yet pain has come to Auger as to the rest. But there is a way of taking
+it.
+
+He suffers in an enlightened, intelligent, almost methodical fashion. He
+does not confuse issues, and complain indiscriminately. Even when in the
+hands of others, he remains the man who had the courage to cut off his
+own foot, and finish the work of the shrapnel. He is too modest and
+respectful to give advice to the surgeon, but he offers him valuable
+information.
+
+He says:
+
+"Just there you are against the bone, it hurts me very much. Ah! there
+you can scrape, I don't feel it much. Take care! You're pressing rather
+too hard. All right: you can go on, I see what it's for...."
+
+And this is how we work together.
+
+"What are you doing? Ah, you're washing it. I like that. It does me
+good. Good blood! Rub a little more just there. You don't know how it
+itches. Oh! if you're going to put the tube in, you must tell me, that I
+may hold on tight to the table."
+
+So the work gets on famously. Auger will make a rapid and excellent
+recovery. With him, one need never hesitate to do what is necessary. I
+wanted to give him an anaesthetic before scraping the bone of his leg.
+He said:
+
+"I don't suppose it will be a very terrible business. If you don't mind,
+don't send me to sleep, but just do what is necessary. I will see to the
+rest."
+
+True, he could not help making a few grimaces. Then the Sergeant said to
+him:
+
+"Would you like to learn the song of the grunting pigs?"
+
+"How does your song go?"
+
+The Sergeant begins in a high, shrill voice:
+
+    Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne
+    On entend les cochons...
+    Cela prouve d'une facon certai-ai-ne
+    Qu'ils non pas l'trooo du... bouche.
+
+Auger begins to laugh; everybody laughs. And meanwhile we are bending
+over the wounded leg and our work gets on apace.
+
+"Now, repeat," says the Sergeant.
+
+He goes over it again, verse by verse, and Auger accompanies him.
+
+    Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne...
+
+Auger stops now and then to make a slight grimace. Sometimes, too, his
+voice breaks. He apologises simply:
+
+"I could never sing in tune."
+
+Nevertheless, the song is learnt, more or less, and when the General
+comes to visit the hospital, Auger says to him:
+
+"Mon General, I can sing you a fine song."
+
+And he would, the rascal, if the head doctor did not look reprovingly at
+him.
+
+It is very dismal, after this, to attend to Gregoire, and to hear him
+groaning:
+
+"Ah! don't pull like that. You're dragging out my heart."
+
+I point out that if he won't let us attend to him, he will become much
+worse. Then he begins to cry.
+
+"What do I care, since I shall die anyhow?"
+
+He has depressed the orderlies, the stretcher-bearers, everybody. He
+does not discourage me; but he gives me a great deal of trouble.
+
+All you gentlemen who meet together to discuss the causes of the war,
+the end of the war, the using-up of effectives and the future bases
+of society, excuse me if I do not give you my opinion on these grave
+questions. I am really too much taken up with the wound of our unhappy
+Gregoire.
+
+It is not satisfactory, this wound, and when I look at it, I cannot
+think of anything else; the screams of the wounded man would prevent me
+from considering the conditions of the decisive battle and the results
+of the rearrangement of the map of Europe with sufficient detachment.
+
+Listen: Gregoire tells me he is going to die. I think and believe that
+he is wrong. But he certainly will die if I do not take it upon myself
+to make him suffer. He will die, because every one is forsaking him. And
+he has long ago forsaken himself.
+
+ "My dear chap," remarked Auger to a very prim orderly, "it is no
+doubt unpleasant to have only one shoe to put on, but it gives one a
+chance of saving. And now, moreover, I only run half as much risk of
+scratching my wife with my toe-nails in bed as you do. ..."
+
+"Quite so," added the Sergeant; "with Mariette he will caress his good
+lady, so to speak."
+
+Auger and the Sergeant crack jokes like two old cronies. The embarrassed
+orderly, failing to find a retort, goes away laughing constrainedly.
+
+I sat down by Auger, and we were left alone.
+
+"I am a basket-maker," he said gravely. "I shall be able to take up my
+trade again more or less. But think of workers on the land, like Groult,
+who has lost a hand, and Lerondeau, with his useless leg!... That's
+really terrible!"
+
+Auger rolls his r's in a way that gives piquancy and vigour to his
+conversation. He talks of others with a natural magnanimity which comes
+from the heart, like the expression of his eyes, and rings true, like
+the sound of his voice. And then again, he really need not envy any one.
+Have I not said it! He is a prince.
+
+"I have had some very grand visitors," he says. "Look, another lady came
+a little while ago, and left me this big box of sweets. Do take one,
+Monsieur, it would be a pleasure to me. And please, will you hand them
+round to the others, from me?"
+
+He adds in a lower tone:
+
+"Look under my bed. I put everything I am given there. Really, there's
+too much. I'm ashamed. There are some chaps here who never get anything,
+and they were brave fellows who did their duty just as well as I did."
+
+It is true, there are many brave soldiers in the ward, but only one
+Military Medal was given among them, and it came to Auger. Its arrival
+was the occasion of a regular little fete; his comrades all took part in
+it cordially, for strange to say, no one is jealous of Auger. A miracle
+indeed! Did you ever hear of any other prince of whom no one was
+jealous?
+
+"Are you going?" said Auger. "Please just say a few words to Groult. He
+is a bit of a grouser, but he likes a talk."
+
+ Auger has given me a lesson. I will go and smoke a cigarette with
+Groult, and above all, I will go and see Gregoire.
+
+Groult, indeed, is not altogether neglected. He is an original, a
+perverse fellow. He is pointed out as a curious animal. He gets his
+share of presents and attention.
+
+But no one knows anything about Gregoire; he lies staring at the wall,
+and growing thinner every day, and Death seems the only person who is
+interested in him.
+
+You shall not die, Gregoire! I vow to keep hold of you, to suffer with
+you, and to endure your ill-temper humbly. You, who seem to be bearing
+the misery of an entire world, shall not be miserable all alone.
+
+Kind ladies who come to see our wounded and give them picture-books,
+tri-coloured caps and sweetmeats, do not forget Gregoire, who is
+wretched. Above all, give him your sweetest smiles.
+
+You go away well pleased with yourselves because you have been generous
+to Auger. But there is no merit in being kind to Auger. With a single
+story, a single clasp of his hand, he gives you much more than he
+received from you. He gives you confidence; he restores your peace of
+mind.
+
+Go and see Gregoire who has nothing but his suffering to give, and who
+very nearly gave his life.
+
+If you go away without a smile for Gregoire, you may fear that you have
+not fulfilled your task. And don't expect him to return your smile, for
+where would your liberality be in that case?
+
+It is easy to pity Auger, who needs no pity. It is difficult to pity
+Gregoire, and yet he is so pitiable.
+
+Do not forget; Auger is touched with grace; but Gregoire will be damned
+if you do not hold out your hand to him.
+
+God Himself, who has withheld grace from the damned, must feel pity for
+them.
+
+It is a very artless desire for equality which makes us say that all men
+are equal in the presence of suffering. No! no! they are not. And as we
+know nothing of Death but that which precedes and determines it, men are
+not even equal in the presence of Death.
+
+
+
+
+
+NIGHTS IN ARTOIS
+
+
+I
+
+
+One more glance into the dark ward, in which something begins to reign
+which is not sleep, but merely a kind of nocturnal stupor.
+
+The billiard-table has been pushed into a corner; it is loaded with an
+incoherent mass of linen, bottles, and articles of furniture. A smell
+of soup and excrements circulates between the stretchers, and seems to
+insult the slender onyx vases that surmount the cabinet.
+
+And now, quickly! quickly! Let us escape on tiptoe into the open air.
+
+The night is clear and cold, without a breath of wind: a vast block
+of transparent ice between the snow and the stars. Will it suffice
+to cleanse throat and lungs, nauseated by the close effluvium of
+suppurating wounds?
+
+The snow clings and balls under our sabots. How good it would be to have
+a game.... But we are overwhelmed by a fatigue that has become a kind of
+exasperation. We will go to the end of the lawn.
+
+Here is the great trench in which the refuse of the dressing-ward, all
+the residuum of infection, steams and rots. Further on we come to the
+musical pines, which Dalcour the miner visits every night, lantern in
+hand, to catch sparrows, Dalcour, the formidable Zouave, whom no one can
+persuade not to carry about his stiff leg and the gaping wound in his
+bandaged skull in the rain.
+
+Let us go as far as the wall of the graveyard, which time has caused
+to swell like a protuberance on the side of the park, and which is so
+providentially close at hand.
+
+The old Chateau looms, a stately mass, through the shadows. To-night,
+lamps are gleaming softly in every window. It looks like a silent,
+illuminated ship, the prow of which is cutting through an ice-bank.
+Nothing emerges from it but this quiet light. Nothing reveals the nature
+of its terrible freight.
+
+We know that in every room, in every storey, on the level of every
+floor, young mutilated bodies are ranged side by side. A hundred hearts
+send the over-heated blood in swift pulsations towards the suffering
+limbs. Through all these bodies the projectile in its furious course
+made its way, crushing delicate mechanisms, rending the precious organs
+which make us take pleasure in walking, breathing, drinking....
+
+Up there, this innocent joy of order no longer exists; and in order to
+recapture it, a hundred bodies are performing labours so slow and hard
+that they call forth tears and sighs from the strongest.
+
+But how the murmurs of this centre of suffering are muffled by the
+walls! How silently and darkly it broods in space!
+
+Like a dressing on a large inflamed wound, the Chateau covers its
+contents closely, and one sees nothing but these lamps, just such lamps
+as might illuminate a studious solitude, or a conversation between
+intimate friends at evening, or a love lost in self-contemplation.
+
+We are now walking through thickets of spindle-wood, resplendent under
+the snow, and the indifference of these living things to the monstrous
+misery round them makes the impotent soul that is strangling me seem
+odious and even ridiculous to me. In spite of all protestations of
+sympathy, the mortal must always suffer alone in his flesh, and this
+indeed is why war is possible....
+
+Philippe here thinks perhaps as I do; but he and I have these thoughts
+thrust on us in the same pressing fashion. Men who are sleeping twenty
+paces from this spot would be wakened by a cry; yet they are undisturbed
+by this formidable presence, inarticulate as a mollusc in the depths of
+the sea.
+
+In despair, I stamp on the soft snow with my sabot. The winter grass it
+covers subsists obstinately, and has no solidarity with anything else on
+earth. Let the pain of man wear itself out; the grass will not wither.
+Sleep, good folks of the whole world. Those who suffer here will not
+disturb your rest.
+
+And suddenly, beyond the woods a rocket rises and bursts against the
+sky, brilliant as a meteor. It means something most certainly, and
+it warns some one; but its coarse ingenuity does not deceive me. No
+barbarous signal such as this could give me back confidence in my soul
+to-night.
+
+
+II
+
+
+The little room adjoining the closet where I sleep has been set apart
+for those whose cries or effluvia make them intolerable to the rest. As
+it is small and encumbered, it will only admit a single stretcher, and
+men are brought in there to die in turn.
+
+But lately, when the Chateau was reigning gracefully in the midst of
+verdure, the centre of the great star of alleys piercing its groves
+of limes and beeches, its owners occasionally entertained a brilliant
+society; and if they had under their roof some gay and lovely milk-white
+maiden, they gave her this little room at the summit of the right wing,
+whence the sun may be seen rising above the forests, to dream, and
+sleep, and adorn herself in.
+
+To-day, the facade of the Chateau seems to be listening, strained
+and anxious, to the cannonade; and the little room has become a
+death-chamber.
+
+Madelan was the first we put there. He was raving in such a brutal and
+disturbing manner, in spite of the immobility of his long, paralysed
+limbs, that his companions implored us to remove him. I think Madelan
+neither understood nor noticed this isolation, for he was already given
+over to a deeper solitude; but his incessant vociferation, after he was
+deprived of listeners, took on a strange and terrible character.
+
+For four days and four nights, he never ceased talking vehemently; and
+listening to him, one began to think that all the life of the big body
+that was already dead, had fled in frenzy to his throat. For four nights
+I heard him shouting incoherent, elusive things, which seemed to be
+replies to some mysterious interlocutor.
+
+At dawn, and from hour to hour throughout the day, I went to see him
+where he sprawled on a paillasse on the floor, like some red-haired
+stricken beast, with out-stretched limbs, convulsed by spasms which
+displaced the dirty blanket that covered him.
+
+He lost flesh with such incredible rapidity that he seemed to be
+evaporating through the gaping wound in the nape of his neck.
+
+Then I would speak to him, saying things that were kindly meant but
+futile, because conversation is impossible between a man who is being
+whirled along by the waters of a torrent, and one who is seated among
+the rushes on the bank. Madelan did not listen to me, and he continued
+his strange colloquy with the other. He did not want us or any one else;
+he had ceased to eat or to drink, and relieved himself as he lay, asking
+neither help nor tendance.
+
+One day, the wind blew the door of the room to, and there was no key to
+open it. A long ladder was put up to the window, and a pane of glass was
+broken to effect an entrance. Directly this was done, Madelan was heard,
+continuing his dream aloud.
+
+He died, and was at once replaced by the man with his skull battered in,
+of whom we knew nothing, because when he came to us he could neither see
+nor speak, and had nothing by way of history but a red and white ticket,
+as large as the palm of a child's hand.
+
+This man spent only one night in the room, filling the silence with
+painful eructations, and thumping on the partition which separated him
+from my bed.
+
+Listening alertly, with the cold air from the open window blowing on
+my face, I heard in turn the crowing of the cocks in the village, the
+irregular breathing of Philippe, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion not
+far from me, and the blows and the death-rattle of the man who took so
+long to die. He became silent, however, in the morning, when the wind
+began to drop, and the first detonation of the day boomed through the
+vault-like quiet of the darkness.
+
+Then we had as our neighbour the hospital orderly, Sergeant Gidel, who
+was nearing his end, and whose cruel hiccough we had been unable to
+alleviate for a week past. This man knew his business, he knew the
+meaning of probe, of fever, of hardened abdomen. He knew too that he had
+a bullet in the spinal cord. He never asked us for anything, and as
+we dared not tell him lies, we were overcome by a kind of shame in his
+presence. He stayed barely two days in the room, looking with dim eyes
+at the engravings on the walls, and the Empire bureau on which vases
+were piled.
+
+But what need is there to tell of all those whom this unhappy room
+swallowed up and ejected?
+
+
+III
+
+
+We have no lights this evening.... We must learn to do without them....
+I grope my way along the passages, where the wind is muttering, to the
+great staircase. Here there is a fitful lamp which makes one prefer
+the darkness. I see the steps, which are white and smeared with mud,
+pictures and tapestries, a sumptuous scheme of decoration flooded at the
+bottom by filth and desolation. As I approach the room where the wounded
+are lying, I hear the calm sound of their conversation. I go in quietly.
+They cease talking; then they begin to chat again, for now they know me.
+
+At first one can only distinguish long forms ranged upon the ground. The
+stretchers seem to be holding forth with human voices. One of these is
+narrating:
+
+"We were all three sitting side by side... though I had told the
+adjutant that corner was not a good place.... They had just brought us a
+ration of soup with a little bit of meat that was all covered with white
+frost. Then bullets began to arrive by the dozen, and we avoided them
+as well as we could, and the earth flew about, and we were laughing,
+because we had an idea that among all those bullets there was not one
+that would find its billet. And then they stopped firing, and we came
+back to sit on the ledge. There were Chagniol and Duc and I, and I had
+them both to the right of me. We began to talk about Giromagny, and
+about Danjoutin, because that's the district we all came from, and this
+went on for about half an hour. And then, all of a sudden, a bullet
+came, just a single one, but this time it was a good one. It went
+through Chagniol's head, then through Duc's, and as I was a little
+taller than they, it only passed through my neck...."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then it went off to the devil! Chagniol fell forward on his face. Duc
+got up, and ran along on all fours as far as the bend in the trench, and
+there he began to scratch out the earth like a rabbit, and then he died.
+The blood was pouring down me right and left, and I thought it was time
+for me to go. I set off running, holding a finger to each side of my
+neck, because of the blood. I was thinking: just a single bullet! It's
+too much! It was really a mighty good one! And then I saw the adjutant.
+So I said to him: 'I warned you, mon adjutant, that that corner was not
+a good place!' But the blood rushed up into my mouth, and I began to run
+again."
+
+There was a silence, and I heard a voice murmur with conviction:
+
+"YOU were jolly lucky, weren't you?"
+
+Mulet, too, tells his story:
+
+"They had taken our fire... 'That's not your fire,' I said to him. 'Not
+our fire?' he said. Then the other came up and he said: 'Hold your jaw
+about the fire...' 'It's not yours,' I said. Then he said: 'You don't
+know who you're talking to.' And he turned his cap, which had been
+inside out... 'Ah! I beg your pardon,' I said, 'but I could not tell...'
+And so they kept our fire...."
+
+Maville remarks calmly: "Yes, things like that will happen sometimes."
+
+Silence again. The tempest shakes the windows with a furious hand. The
+room is faintly illuminated by a candle which has St. Vitus' dance.
+Rousselot, our little orderly, knits away industriously in the circle
+of light. I smoke a pipe at once acrid and consoling, like this minute
+itself in the midst of the infernal adventure.
+
+Before going away, I think of Croquelet, the silent, whose long
+silhouette I see at the end of the room. "He sleeps all the time," says
+Mulet, "he sleeps all day." I approach the stretcher, I bend over it,
+and I see two large open eyes, which look at me gravely and steadily in
+the gloom. And this look is so sad, so poignant, that I am filled with
+impotent distress.
+
+"You sleep too much, my poor Croquelet."
+
+He answers me with his rugged accent, but in a feeble voice:
+
+"Don't listen to him; it's not true. You know quite well that I can't
+sleep, and that you won't give me a draught to let me get a real nap.
+This afternoon, I read a little.... But it wasn't very interesting....
+If I could have another book...."
+
+"Show me your book, Croquelet."
+
+He thrusts out his chin towards a little tract. I strike a match, and I
+read on the grey cover: "Of the Quality of Prayers addressed to God."
+
+"All right, Croquelet, I'll try to get you a book with pictures in it.
+How do you feel this evening?"
+
+"Ah! bad! very bad! They're thawing now...."
+
+He has had frost-bite in his feet, and is beginning to suffer so much
+from them that he forgets the wound in his side, which is mortal, but
+less active.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+I have come to take refuge among my wounded to smoke in peace, and
+meditate in the shadow. Here, the moral atmosphere is pure. These men
+are so wretched, so utterly humiliated, so absorbed in their relentless
+sufferings that they seem to have relinquished the burden of the
+passions in order to concentrate their powers on the one endeavour: to
+live.
+
+In spite of their solidarity they are for the time isolated by their
+individual sufferings. Later on, they will communicate; but this is the
+moment when each one contemplates his own anguish, and fights his own
+battle, with cries of pain....
+
+They are all my friends. I will stay among them, associating myself with
+all my soul in their ordeal.
+
+Perhaps here I shall find peace. Perhaps all ignoble discord will call a
+truce on the threshold of this empire.
+
+But a short distance from us the battle-field has thundered unceasingly
+for days. Like a noisy, complicated mechanism which turns out the
+products of its internal activity, the stupid machine of war throws out,
+from minute to minute, bleeding men. We pick them up, and here they are,
+swathed in bandages. They have been crushed in the twinkling of an eye;
+and now we shall have to ask months and years to repair or palliate the
+damage.
+
+How silent they are this evening! And how it makes one's heart ache
+to look at them! Here is Bourreau, with the brutal name and the gentle
+nature, who never utters a complaint, and whom a single bullet has
+deprived of sight for ever. Here is Bride, whom we fear to touch, so
+covered is he with bandages, but who looks at us with touching, liquid
+eyes, his mind already wandering. Here is Lerouet, who will not see next
+morning dawn over the pine-trees, and who has a gangrened wound near
+his heart. And the others, all of whom I know by their individual
+misfortunes.
+
+How difficult it is to realise what they were, all these men who a year
+ago, were walking in streets, tilling the land, or writing in an office.
+Their present is too poignant. Here they lie on the ground, like some
+fair work of art defaced. Behold them! The creature par excellence has
+received a great outrage, an outrage it has wrought upon itself.
+
+We are ignorant of their past. But have they a future? I consider these
+innocent victims in the tragic majesty of the hour, and I feel ashamed
+of living and breathing freely among them.
+
+Poor, poor brothers! What could one do for you which would not be
+insufficient, unworthy, mediocre? We can at least give up everything and
+devote ourselves heart and soul to our holy and exacting work.
+
+But no! round the beds on which your solitary drama is enacted, men are
+still taking part in a sinister comedy. Every kind of folly, the most
+ignoble and also the most imbecile passions, pursue their enterprises
+and their satisfactions over your heads.
+
+Neither the four corpses we buried this morning, nor your daily agonies
+will disarm these appetites, suspend these calculations, and destroy
+these ambitions the development and fruition of which even your
+martyrdom, may be made to serve.
+
+
+
+I will spend the whole evening among my wounded, and we will talk
+together, gently, of their misery; it will please them, and they will
+make me forget the horrible atmosphere of discussion that reigns here.
+
+Alas! during the outburst of the great catastrophe, seeing the volume of
+blood and fire, listening to the uproar, smelling the stench of the
+vast gangrene, we thought that all passions would be laid aside, like
+cumbersome weapons, and that we should give ourselves up with clean
+hearts and empty hands to battle against the fiery nightmare. He who
+fights and defends himself needs a pure heart: so does he who wanders
+among charnel houses, gives drink to parched lips, washes fevered faces
+and bathes wounds. We thought there would be a great forgetfulness of
+self and of former hopes, and of the whole world. O Union of pure hearts
+to meet the ordeal!
+
+But no! The first explosion was tremendous, yet hardly had its echoes
+died away when the rag-pickers were already at work among the ruins, in
+quest of cutlet-bones and waste paper.
+
+And yet, think of the sacred anguish of those first hours!
+
+Well, so be it! For my part, I will stay here, between these stretchers
+with their burdens of anguish.
+
+At this hour one is inclined to distrust everything, man and the
+universe, and the future of Right. But we cannot have any doubts as to
+the suffering of man. It is the one certain thing at this moment.
+
+So I will stay and drink in this sinister testimony. And each time that
+Beal, who has a gaping wound in the stomach, holds out his hands to me
+with a little smile, I will get up and hold his hands in mine, for he is
+feverish, and he knows that my hands are always icy.
+
+
+V
+
+
+Bride is dead. We had been working all day, and in the evening we had to
+find time to go and bury Bride.
+
+It is not a very long ceremony. The burial-ground is near. About a dozen
+of us follow the lantern, slipping in the mud, and stumbling over the
+graves. Here we are at the wall, and here is the long ditch, always
+open, which every day is prolonged a little to the right, and filled
+in a little to the left. Here is the line of white crosses, and the
+flickering shadows on the wall caused by the lantern.
+
+The men arrange the planks, slip the ropes, and lower the body,
+disputing in undertones, for it is not so easy as one might think to
+be a grave-digger. One must have the knack of it. And the night is very
+dark and the mud very sticky.
+
+At last the body is at the bottom of the trench, and the muddy ropes
+are withdrawn. The little consumptive priest who stands at the graveside
+murmurs the prayer for the dead. The rain beats in our faces. The
+familiar demon of Artois, the wind, leaps among the ancient trees. The
+little priest murmurs the terrible words: Dies irae, dies illa....
+
+And this present day is surely the day of wrath... I too utter my
+prayer: "In the name of the unhappy world, Bride, I remit all thy sins,
+I absolve thee from all thy faults! Let this day, at least, be a day of
+rest."
+
+The little priest stands bare-headed in the blast. An orderly who is an
+ecclesiastic holds the end of an apron over his head. A man raises the
+lantern to the level of his eye. And the rain-drops gleam and sparkle
+furtively.
+
+Bride is dead....
+
+Now we meet again in the little room where friendship reigns.
+
+Pierre and Jacques, gallant fellows, I shall not forget your beautiful,
+painful smile at the moment which brings discouragement to the
+experienced man. I shall not forget.
+
+The beef and rice, which one needs to be very hungry to swallow,
+is distributed. And a gentle cheerfulness blossoms in the circle of
+lamplight, a cheerfulness which tries to catch something of the gaiety
+of the past. Man has such a deep-seated need of joy that he improvises
+it everywhere, even in the heart of misery.
+
+And suddenly, through the steam of the soup, I see Bride's look
+distinctly.
+
+It was no ordinary look. The extremity of suffering, the approach
+of death, perhaps, and also the hidden riches of his soul, gave it
+extraordinary light, sweetness, and gentleness. When one came to
+his bedside, and bent over him, the look was there, a well-spring of
+refreshment.
+
+But Bride is dead: we saw his eyes transformed into dull, meaningless
+membranes.
+
+Where is that well-spring? Can it be quenched?
+
+Bride is dead. Involuntarily, I repeat aloud: "Bride is dead."
+
+Have I roused a responsive echo in these sympathetic souls? A religious
+silence falls upon them. The oldest of all problems comes and takes its
+place at the table like a familiar guest. It breathes mysteriously into
+every ear: "Where is Bride? Where is Bride's look?"
+
+
+VI
+
+
+A lantern advances, swinging among the pines. Who is coming to meet us?
+
+Philippe recognises the figure of Monsieur Julien. Here is the man,
+indeed, with his porter's livery, and his base air as of an insolent
+slave. He waves a stable-lantern which throws grotesque shadows upwards
+on his face; and he is obviously furious at having been forced to render
+a service.
+
+He brandishes the lantern angrily, and thrusts out his chin to show us
+the advancing figures: two men are carrying a stretcher on which lies a
+big body wrapped in a coarse winding sheet. The two men are weary, and
+set the stretcher down carefully in the mud.
+
+"Is it Fumat?"
+
+"Yes. He has just died, very peacefully."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"There is no place anywhere for a corpse. So we are taking him to the
+chapel in the burial-ground. But he is heavy."
+
+"We will give you a hand."
+
+Philippe and I take hold of the stretcher. The men follow us in silence.
+The body is heavy, very heavy. We drag our sabots out of the clay
+laboriously. And we walk slowly, breathing hard.
+
+How heavy he is!... He was called Fumat... He was a giant. He came from
+the mountains of the Centre, leaving a red-tiled village on a hill-side,
+among juniper-bushes and volcanic boulders. He left his native place
+with its violet peaks and strong aromatic scents and came to the war
+in Artois. He was past the age when men can march to the attack, but he
+guarded the trenches and cooked. He received his death-wound while he
+was cooking. The giant of Auvergne was peppered with small missiles.
+He had no wound at all proportionate to his huge body. Nothing but
+splinters of metal. Once again, David has slain Goliath.
+
+He was two days dying. He was asked: "Is there anything you would like?"
+And he answered with white lips: "Nothing, thank you." When we were
+anxious and asked him "How do you feel?" he was always quite satisfied.
+"I am getting on very well." He died with a discretion, a modesty, a
+self-forgetfulness which redeemed the egotism of the universe.
+
+How heavy he is! He was wounded as he was blowing up the fire for the
+soup. He did not die fighting. He uttered no historic word. He fell at
+his post as a cook.... He was not a hero.
+
+You are not a hero, Fumat. You are only a martyr. And we are going
+to lay you in the earth of France, which has engulfed a noble and
+innumerable army of martyrs.
+
+The shadow of the trees sweeps like a huge sickle across space. An acrid
+smell of cold decay rises on the night. The wind wails its threnody for
+Fumat.
+
+"Open the door, Monsieur Julien."
+
+The lout pushes the door, grumbling to himself. We lay the body on the
+pavement of the chapel.
+
+Renaud covers the corpse carefully with a faded flag. And suddenly, as
+if to celebrate the moment, the brutal roar of guns comes to us from
+the depths of the woods, breaks violently into the chapel, seizes and
+rattles the trembling window-panes. A hundred times over, a whole nation
+of cannon yells in honour of Fumat. And each time other Fumats fall in
+the mud yonder, in their appointed places.
+
+
+VII
+
+
+They ought not to have cut off all the light in this manner, and it
+would not have been done, perhaps, if...
+
+There is a kind of mania for organisation which is the sworn enemy of
+order; in its efforts to discover the best place for everything, it ends
+by diverting everything from its right function and locality, and making
+everything as inopportune as itself. It was a mistake to cut off all the
+lights this evening, on some pretext or the other. The rooms of the
+old mansion are not packed with bales of cotton, but with men who have
+anxious minds and tortured bodies.
+
+A mournful darkness suddenly reigned; and outside, the incessant storm
+that rages in this country swept along like a river in spate.
+
+Little Rochet was dreaming in the liquid light of the lamp, with hands
+crossed on his breast, and the delicate profile of an exhausted saint.
+
+He was dreaming of vague and exquisite things, for cruel fever has
+moments of generosity between two nightmares. He was dreaming so sweetly
+that he forgot the abominable stench of his body, and that a smile
+touched the two deep wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, set there by
+a week of agony.
+
+But all the lamps have been put out, and the noise of the hurricane has
+become more insistent, and the wounded have ceased talking, for darkness
+discourages conversation.
+
+There are some places where the men with whom the shells have dealt
+mercifully and whose wounds are only scratches congregate. These have
+only the honour of wounds, and what may be called their delights....
+But here, we have only the worst cases; and here they have to await the
+supreme decision of death.
+
+Little Rochet awoke to a reality full of darkness and despair. He heard
+nothing but laboured breathing round him, and rising above it all, the
+violent breath of the storm. He was suddenly conscious of his lacerated
+stomach, of his lost leg, and he realised that the fetid smell in the
+air was the smell of his flesh. And he thought of the loving letter he
+had received in the morning from his four big sisters with glossy hair,
+he thought of all his lost, ravished happiness....
+
+Renaud hurries up, groping his way among the dark ambushes of the
+corridor.
+
+"Come, come quickly. Little Rochet has thrown himself out of bed."
+
+Holding up a candle, I take in the melancholy scene. We have to get
+Rochet into bed again, readjust his bandages, wipe up the fetid liquid
+spilt on the floor.
+
+Rochet's lips are compressed. I stoop to his ear and ask softly:
+
+"Why did you do this?"
+
+His face remains calm, and he answers gently, looking me full in the
+eyes: "I want to die."
+
+I leave the room, disarmed, my head bowed, and go in search of Monet,
+who is a priest and an excellent orderly. He is smoking a pipe in a
+corner. He has just had news that his young brother has been killed in
+action, and he had snatched a few minutes of solitude.
+
+"Monet," I say, "I think Rochet is a believer. Well, go to him. He may
+want you."
+
+Monet puts away his pipe, and goes off noiselessly.
+
+As to me, I go and wander about outside. On the poplar-lined road, in
+company with the furious rain and the darkness, I shall perhaps be able
+to master the flood of bitterness that sweeps over me.
+
+At the end of an hour, my anxiety brings me back to Rochet's bedside.
+The candle is burning away with a steady flame. Monet is reading in a
+little book with a clasp. The profile of the wounded man has still the
+pitiful austerity of a tortured saint.
+
+"Is he quieter now?"
+
+Monet lifts his fine dark eyes to my face, and drops his book.
+
+"Yes. He is dead."
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Why has Hell been painted as a place of hopeless torture and eternal
+lamentation?
+
+I believe that even in the lowest depths of Hell, the damned sing, jest,
+and play cards. I am led to imagine this after seeing these men rowing
+in their galleys, chained to them by fever and wounds.
+
+Blaireau, who has only lost a hand, preludes in an undertone:
+
+    Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur....
+
+This timid breath kindles the dormant flame. Houdebine, who has a
+fractured knee, but who now expects to be fairly comfortable till the
+morning, at once responds and continues:
+
+    Marguerite! Marguerite!
+
+The two sing in unison, with delighted smiles:
+
+    Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur
+    Marguerite! Marguerite!
+
+Maville joins in at the second verse, and even Legras, whose two legs
+are broken, and the Chasseur Alpin, who has a hole in his skull.
+
+Panchat, the man who had a bullet through his neck, beats time with his
+finger, because he is forbidden to speak.
+
+All this goes on in low tones; but faces light up, and flush, as if a
+bottle of brandy had been passed round.
+
+Then Houdebine turns to Panchat and says: "Will you have a game of dummy
+manilla, Panchat?"
+
+Dummy manilla is a game for two; and they have to be content with games
+for two, because no one in this ward can get up, and communication is
+only easy for those in adjacent beds.
+
+Panchat makes a sign of consent. Why should he not play dummy manilla,
+which is a silent game. A chair is put between the two beds, and he
+shuffles the cards.
+
+The cards are so worn at the corners that they have almost become ovals.
+The court cards smile through a fog of dirt; and to deal, one has to wet
+one's thumb copiously, because a thick, tenacious grease makes the cards
+stick together in an evil-smelling mass.
+
+But a good deal of amusement is still to be got out of these precious
+bits of old paste-board.
+
+Panchat supports himself on his elbow, Houdebine has to keep on his
+back, because of his knee. He holds his cards against his chin, and
+throws them down energetically on the chair with his right hand.
+
+The chair is rather far off, the cards are dirty, and sometimes
+Houdebine asks his silent adversary: "What's that?"
+
+Panchat takes the card and holds it out at arm's length.
+
+Houdebine laughs gaily.
+
+He plays his cards one after the other, and dummy's hand also:
+
+"Trump! Trump! Trump! And ace of hearts!"
+
+Even those who cannot see anything laugh too.
+
+Panchat is vexed, but he too laughs noiselessly. Then he takes out the
+lost sou from under his straw pillow.
+
+Meanwhile, Mulet is telling a story. It is always the same story, but it
+is always interesting.
+
+An almost imperceptible voice, perhaps Legras', hums slowly:
+
+    Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur.
+
+Who talks of happiness here?
+
+I recognise the accents of obstinate, generous life. I recognise thine
+accents, artless flesh! Only thou couldst dare to speak of happiness
+between the pain of the morning and that of the evening, between the man
+who is groaning on the right, and the man who is dying on the left.
+
+Truly, in the utmost depths of Hell, the damned must mistake their need
+of joy for joy itself.
+
+I know quite well that there is hope here.
+
+So that in hell too there must be hope.
+
+
+IX
+
+
+But lately, Death was the cruel stranger, the stealthy-footed
+visitor.... Now, it is the romping dog of the house.
+
+Do you remember the days when the human body seemed made for joy, when
+each of its organs represented a function and a delight? Now, each part
+of the body evokes the evil that threatens it, and the special suffering
+it engenders.
+
+Apart from this, it is well adapted for its part in the laborious drama:
+the foot to carry a man to the attack; the arm to work the cannon; the
+eye to watch the adversary or adjust the weapon.
+
+But lately, Death was no part of life. We talked of it covertly. Its
+image was at once painful and indecent, calculated to upset the plans
+and projects of existence. It worked as far as possible in obscurity,
+silence and retirement. We disguised it with symbols; we announced it in
+laborious paraphrases, marked by a kind of shame.
+
+To-day Death is closely bound up with the things of life. And this is
+true, not so much because its daily operations are on a vast scale,
+because it chooses the youngest and the healthiest among us, because it
+has become a kind of sacred institution, but more especially because it
+has become a thing so ordinary that it no longer causes us to suspend
+our usual activities, as it used to do: we eat and drink beside the
+dead, we sleep amidst the dying, we laugh and sing in the company of
+corpses.
+
+And how, indeed, can it be otherwise? You know quite well that man
+cannot live without eating, drinking, and sleeping, nor without laughing
+and singing.
+
+Ask all those who are suffering their hard Calvary here. They are gentle
+and courageous, they sympathise with the pain of others; but they must
+eat when the soup comes round, sleep, if they can, during the long
+night; and try to laugh again when the ward is quiet, and the corpse of
+the morning has been carried out.
+
+Death remains a great thing, but one with which one's relations have
+become frequent and intimate. Like the king who shows himself at his
+toilet, Death is still powerful, but it has become familiar and slightly
+degraded.
+
+Lerouet died just now. We closed his eyes, tied up his chin, then
+pulled out the sheet to cover the corpse while it was waiting for the
+stretcher-bearers.
+
+"Can't you eat anything?" said Mulet to Maville. Maville, who is very
+young and shy, hesitates: "I can't get it down."
+
+And after a pause, he adds: "I can't bear to see such things."
+
+Mulet wipes his plate calmly and says: "Yes, sometimes it used to take
+away my appetite too, so much so that I used to be sick. But I have got
+accustomed to it now."
+
+Pouchet gulps down his coffee with a sort of feverish eagerness.
+
+"One feels glad to get off with the loss of a leg when one sees that."
+
+"One must live," adds Mulet.
+
+"Well, for all the pleasure one gets out of life...."
+
+Beliard is the speaker. He had a bullet in the bowel, yet we hope to get
+him well soon. But his whole attitude betrays indifference. He smokes a
+great deal, and rarely speaks. He has no reason to despair, and he knows
+that he can resume his ordinary life. But familiarity with Death, which
+sometimes makes life seem so precious, occasionally ends by producing a
+distaste for it, or rather a deep weariness of it.
+
+
+X
+
+
+A whole nation, ten whole nations are learning to live in Death's
+company. Humanity has entered the wild beast's cage, and sits there with
+the patient courage of the lion-tamer.
+
+Men of my country, I learn to know you better every day, and from
+having looked you in the face at the height of your sufferings, I have
+conceived a religious hope for the future of our race. It is mainly
+owing to my admiration for your resignation, your native goodness, your
+serene confidence in better times to come that I can still believe in
+the moral future of the world.
+
+At the very hour when the most natural instinct inclines the world to
+ferocity, you preserve, on your beds of suffering, a beauty, a purity of
+outlook which goes far to atone for the monstrous crime. Men of France,
+your simple grandeur of soul redeems humanity from its greatest crime,
+and raises it from its deep abyss.
+
+We are told how you bear the misery of the battle-field, how in the
+discouraging cold and mud, you await the hour of your cruel duty, how
+you rush forward to meet the mortal blow, through the unimaginable
+tumult of peril.
+
+But when you come here, there are further sufferings in store for you;
+and I know with what courage you endure them.
+
+The doors of the Chateau close on a new life for you, a life that is
+also one of perpetual peril and contest. I help you in this contest, and
+I see how gallantly you wage it.
+
+Not a wrinkle in your faces escapes me. Not one of your pains, not one
+of the tremors of your lacerated flesh. And I write them all down, just
+as I note your simple words, your cries, your sighs of hope, as I also
+note the expression of your faces at the solemn hour when man speaks no
+more.
+
+Not one of your words leaves me unmoved; there is not one of your
+actions which is not worthy of record. All must contribute to the
+history of our great ordeal.
+
+For it is not enough to give oneself up to the sacred duty of succour.
+It is not enough to apply the beneficent knife to the wound, or to
+change the dressings skilfully and carefully.
+
+It is also my mission to record the history of those who have been the
+sacrificial victims of the race, without gloss, in all its truth and
+simplicity; the history of the men you have shown yourselves to be in
+suffering.
+
+If I left this undone, you would, no doubt, be cured as perfectly, or
+would perish none the less; but the essence of the majestic lesson would
+be lost, the most splendid elements of your courage would remain barren.
+
+And I invite all the world to bow before you with the same attentive
+reverence, WITH HEARTS THAT FORGET NOTHING.
+
+Union of pure hearts to meet the ordeal! Union of pure hearts that
+our country may know and respect herself! Union of pure hearts for the
+redemption of the stricken world!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The New Book Of Martyrs, by Georges Duhamel
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