The corps of orderlies is not always sympathetic. I must say, however,
that in the room where I am employed, each one does his duty, thanks,
no doubt, to the active supervision of the Sister, thanks also
perhaps to three singularly moving personalities among the orderlies
themselves.
To begin with, there is Nicolas Indjematoured, twenty-two, a Greek, and
a subject of the Ottoman empire. He held a highly lucrative position,
of which he was very proud, in a bank at Constantinople, but when
the war broke out, he could not bear the thought of being drawn into
service with the Germans against France, and did not hesitate to give
up his job. He would not even see his old mother again, but made a will
providing for her with all his small store of property, and sailed away
as a stowaway on a steamer which landed him at Marseilles. He enlisted
as a volunteer in the Legion and was ordered here, where, however, soon
after his arrival, he received a serious finger wound, and was sent
to St. Dominic to be cured. He explained his state of mind to me with
simplicity and emotion:
"You can understand, madame, how ashamed I am, among all these brave
men, not to have done anything yet for France. Luckily I can help
Sister in serving them. It's a great honour for me."
In the hospital room they all call him "the little Greek." Night and
day he holds himself in readiness to do things for the invalids, whom
he treats with touching consideration, refusing doggedly to accept the
least remuneration from the management.
Boisset, a stubbly little orderly of some sixty years, is an old
employee of the hospital. An ex-pastry cook with no family, he was
operated on and cared for at the hospital ten years ago. His case is
one of those mysterious stories of conversion that work themselves out
in secret near this cross-shaped chapel, with its four great doors wide
open on the wards of suffering.
Boisset, once cured, begged permission not to leave the hospital,
"hoping," as he said, "to consecrate my life to God in the service of
the poor wounded."
Do not his words recall those of the brothers of St. Francis? Like
them, Boisset has summed up his whole life in these two words:
simplicity and heroism. He is at others' service night and day, just
as he desired to be. The Sister calls him "her right arm," something
at which he only half shows his pride. He is the one that's called
upon, with never any fear of putting him out, if there's anything to
be done in the way of lifting some fellow on whom a specially delicate
operation has been performed, or doing some other difficult bit of
duty. "Boisset, Boisset!" You get accustomed to hearing his name called
out each moment. And Boisset, untiring, runs from one bed to the other,
with his mincing, weary step, incessantly. In his moments of leisure he
harks back to his old trade, begging from the kitchen some left-over
bits of milk and whites of eggs, with which he cooks up some sweet
dishes for his beloved patients, by whom they are much appreciated.
What strikes me especially in Boisset is his _joyful spirit_. This
man, who deliberately leads the hardest kind of life, has a smile
always on his lips, and cheerfulness always in his heart. In the little
recess where he does the patients' dishes you can hear him humming the
canticles, especially the magnificat, of which he is very fond, as he
confided to me, because it's the song of joy. When I find myself with
Boisset I always want to talk to him about "Dame Poverty" and "Charity,
her hand-maiden."
Our third orderly, the Marquess of X, belongs to one of the greatest
Italian families. His mother was a French woman, and from the very
beginning of hostilities, "he felt," as he put it, "the French blood
boiling in his veins."
He found a simple and admirable way of doing something for his
mother's country accordingly, by coming and putting himself at the
service of the wounded. He wanted "to perform the humblest duties," he
particularly specified. He did each day, from morning till night, very
humble and sometimes repulsive duties, without apparently recoiling
from them. He is but one in the nameless crowd of orderlies, yet
the patients very easily distinguish him from the others, and the
consolation and care that he gives them are specially sweet to them,
because it includes the admiration of a noble soul and of a whole race
for the French soldier.
The day he arrived, the Marquess of X, after making a tour of the
wounded, came up to me with tears in his eyes.
"What extraordinary reserves of energy and heroism the French still
have," he remarked to me, much moved. "To hear these young fellows tell
of the dangers they've gone through, talking about sufferings, not only
without complaining of them, but laughing about them, is '_the finest
part of it all_.'"