But lately, Death was the cruel stranger, the stealthy-footed
visitor.... Now, it is the romping dog of the house.
Do you remember the days when the human body seemed made for joy, when
each of its organs represented a function and a delight? Now, each part
of the body evokes the evil that threatens it, and the special suffering
it engenders.
Apart from this, it is well adapted for its part in the laborious drama:
the foot to carry a man to the attack; the arm to work the cannon; the
eye to watch the adversary or adjust the weapon.
But lately, Death was no part of life. We talked of it covertly. Its
image was at once painful and indecent, calculated to upset the plans
and projects of existence. It worked as far as possible in obscurity,
silence and retirement. We disguised it with symbols; we announced it in
laborious paraphrases, marked by a kind of shame.
To-day Death is closely bound up with the things of life. And this is
true, not so much because its daily operations are on a vast scale,
because it chooses the youngest and the healthiest among us, because it
has become a kind of sacred institution, but more especially because it
has become a thing so ordinary that it no longer causes us to suspend
our usual activities, as it used to do: we eat and drink beside the
dead, we sleep amidst the dying, we laugh and sing in the company of
corpses.
And how, indeed, can it be otherwise? You know quite well that man
cannot live without eating, drinking, and sleeping, nor without laughing
and singing.
Ask all those who are suffering their hard Calvary here. They are gentle
and courageous, they sympathise with the pain of others; but they must
eat when the soup comes round, sleep, if they can, during the long
night; and try to laugh again when the ward is quiet, and the corpse of
the morning has been carried out.
Death remains a great thing, but one with which one's relations have
become frequent and intimate. Like the king who shows himself at his
toilet, Death is still powerful, but it has become familiar and slightly
degraded.
Lerouet died just now. We closed his eyes, tied up his chin, then
pulled out the sheet to cover the corpse while it was waiting for the
stretcher-bearers.
"Can't you eat anything?" said Mulet to Maville. Maville, who is very
young and shy, hesitates: "I can't get it down."