The New Book of Martyrs Part 3

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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 p.r.o.nounces 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.surances, 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.