The New Book of Martyrs Part 4

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 suns.h.i.+ne.

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 ma.s.s of b.l.o.o.d.y dressings, and draws them gently out of a gaping wound in the abdomen. A ray of suns.h.i.+ne 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 s.p.a.ce, a whining sound arises, swells, rends the air above the shed, and the sh.e.l.l 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: