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."