The solemn midnight, ringing from all the steeples of the great city,
falls lugubriously on the insomnia of the wounded. The hospital is
silent, lighted only by the night lamps that swing from the ceiling.
Gaunt shadows float over the beds and the bare walls with a perpetual
swaying, which seems like the oppressed breathing of the people
lying there. Every now and then there are dreams which talk aloud,
or nightmares that moan; while vague murmurs of steps and voices,
blended in the sonorous chill of the night, rise from the street like
sounds issuing from the portals of a cathedral. They are fraught with
impressions of pious haste,--the mystery of a religious festival
invading the hours of sleep and filling the darkness of the city with
the soft glow of lanterns and the jewelled radiance of church windows.
"Are you asleep, Bernadou?"
On the little table by his friend's bed Salvette has laid a bottle
of Lunel wine and a pretty round Christmas loaf with a twig of
holly stuck in the top. The wounded man opens his eyes, dark and
sunken with fever. In the uncertain light of the night lamps and
the reflection of the long roofs, where the moon dazzles herself in
the snow, this improvised Christmas supper strikes him as something
fantastic.
"Come, wake up, countryman; let it not be said that two Provençals
let Christmas go by without sprinkling it with a draught of wine--"
And Salvette raises him on his pillows with a mother's tenderness. He
fills the glasses, cuts the bread. They drink and speak of Provence.
Bernadou seems to be cheered by the reminiscences and the white wine.
With that childishness which invalids seem to find again in the
depths of their weakness he begs for a Provençal carol. His comrade
is only too happy.
"What shall it be,--'The Host' or 'The Three Kings' or 'Saint Joseph
told me'?"
"No; I prefer 'The Shepherds.' That is the one we used to sing at
home."
"Very well, then. Here goes, 'The Shepherds.'"
And in a low voice, with his head under the bed-curtains, Salvette
begins to sing. At the last verse, when the shepherds have laid down
their offering of fresh eggs and cheeses, and Saint Joseph speeds
them with kind words,--
"Shepherds,
Take your leave,"--
poor Bernadou slips back and falls heavily on his pillow.
His comrade, who believes that he has gone to sleep again, shakes him
by the arm and calls him; but the wounded man remains motionless, and
the twig of holly lying beside him looks like the green palm that
is laid on the couch of the dead. Salvette has understood; he is
slightly tipsy with the celebration and the shock of his sorrow; and
with a voice full of tears he sings out, filling the silent dormitory
with the joyous refrain of Provence,--
"Shepherds,
Take your leave."