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."