At the beautiful Renaissance hospital at Toulouse on the Boulevard
de Strasbourg, I found Georges Cucurou lying in the corner of a huge
hall—a splendid hall it was of carvings and arches and coffer-vaulted
ceiling, all hung with flags.
How small his cot looked, there in the corner of that hall, amid
paintings and gildings and magnificent cornices! How strange those
nurses looked too—white-swathed matrons in flowing draperies, and
nuns with flapping wide white headdresses gliding silently along the
parqueted floor! How strange and quiet those weak, pale soldiers in
the cots, and the patient soldiers sitting about in blue uniforms, and
white, and red! But, most of all, how strange _he_ seemed!
No, it was not Coco, any more—not Coco of the free, airy gestures,
Coco of the big, innocent eyes; but some one who was content to let
his straight-forward words speak for themselves. Not the boy with
mobile, parted lips; but some one whose mouth closed firmly, now, when
he paused, reflecting seriously before he answered. And, as he spoke
of things beyond my ken, he made me, somehow, feel ashamed. Why, it
seemed, now, that, having known Death so near, he knew Life itself—he
was the wiser, the elder; and I the boy, without experience save of
the little arts and playthings of the world....
Well, it was time to go. I took out my notebook to jot down an address,
and as I did so I saw his eyes fastened upon my pencil. His face had
changed.
Without a word, he reached out his hand for it. I understood—and there
came up to me suddenly, a picture of the laughing boy who had pretended
to shoot with such a pencil—and ... even to give a bayonet thrust!
He looked at it curiously with a faint smile. “A-mer-i-cain Pencil
Compagnie” he read with his queer French accent. Then he pressed in the
end, and a little point of lead popped out. He laughed—he sighed. He
handed it back. There were tears in his eyes.
“Ah, m’sieur,” he said, “do you remember that day in Paris, last July?”
There was a silence. Then—“Why, it seems like ten years since then!”
So, in those two months, War the Creator had done its work. Coco was a
man.
[Illustration:
COCO's ITINERARRY
BATTLE of the MARNE
BATTLE of the AISNE
]