The little soldier Mèchin had a serious hemorrhage in the night; he was
in the operating room when I arrived at the hospital this morning. The
Sister had sent his parents to pray in the chapel, they explained to
me. The work of attending to the sick went on as usual; nothing must be
allowed to stop the movement of the wheels. Toward ten o'clock I saw
the litter coming back, borne slowly and with infinite precautions.
Sister Gabrielle walked quite near it, and never stopped repeating:
"Gently, more gently still."
The little soldier's face was as pale as a corpse; his eyes, which
seemed to have sunk back in their orbits, were closed. When he was
lifted up to put him on the bed, the shock, light as it was, brought
on the supreme crisis. His breath, slow and scarcely perceptible,
quickened strangely. His candid blue eyes opened, dilated, immense, as
if looking for some one.
"He wants his parents," the Sister said to me in a low voice. "Go and
find them quickly. It's the end."
In the quiet chapel that opened from the big wards, the poor Mèchins
wept and prayed. I called them. The mother clasped her hands together,
turning to me:
"The operation was successful, wasn't it, madame?"
Alas! I don't know, I fear not; but they must come quickly. Their tears
blind them, she can't see her steps; she stumbles, and I have to give
her my arm for support.
The moment she approaches her son she recognizes the shadow of death on
his dear face, and would have given a cry of sorrow, but that Sister
Gabrielle stops her, putting a finger on her lips. Soldiers who die
must be surrounded by so great a peace.
"Here is your mother, here quite near to you," says the calm voice of
the Sister in the ear of the dying man. "She embraces you. Your father
is here, too. And here is the crucified One, Our Lord, here on your
lips."
The little soldier kisses the cross and smiles at his mother; then his
eyes, wide open, and as if drawn by some invincible attraction, turn
and fix themselves on the open window opposite the bed, through which
can be seen the infinite depths of the sky. Nothing again, till his
last breath was drawn, could make his gaze turn elsewhere. Where have
I already beheld a scene like this? I remember--it was in Greece, at
Athens, last year. In the room of the tombs, a simple and admirable
funeral monument represents death. A fine young man of twenty is
standing ready to depart. His parents, their faces torn with sorrow,
stretch out their arms to him, calling him, but he, so calm in the
purity of the white marble, his eyes as if fascinated, looks fixedly,
with all his thought, into the distance, one knows not where. As we
passed this masterpiece, the young Greek who was with me whispered to
me:
"Look at that boy there. He sees _something else_."
Our little soldier, too, seemed to see something else. The chaplain
gave him the last blessings. The mysterious shore drew nearer moment by
moment. A deep silence, solemnly calm and very moving, fell suddenly
on the great room into which the terrible visitor was so soon to
penetrate; truly he must die well, surrounded thus by his comrades,
upheld until the end by a Sister of Charity. The wings of her white
cornette tremble above the young face in its last agony. The Sister's
voice, already a supernatural one, is the last of this world's voices
that Private Mèchin is to hear. She says, and he repeats slowly, the
supreme invocation: "O God, receive me into Thy Paradise. Jesus, have
mercy on me. Holy Mother of God, pray for us in the hour of our death."
It is over ... the last breath exhales gently. The young soldier's gaze
is fixed forever on the great light of God. Sister Gabrielle gently
closes his eyelids and places the crucifix on the boy's heart. All is
so calm, so evangelical, that the parents themselves dare not weep.
Ah, how truly he spoke, the chaplain who wrote from the front: "The
soldiers of France die without pain, like angels."
When the parents were led away for a while Sister Gabrielle piously
replaced the sheet on the dead face, and said to me:
"This is the time for the patients' dinners. If you will, we'll go and
serve them, and then we'll come back and lay out the body of this poor
lad here."
I look at her wonderingly; she is very pale, and her eyes are full of
unshed tears. She busies herself with the necessities of them all, with
her usual clear-headedness. Have they already broken with everything
of earth, these Sisters, lifted themselves for good above the most
pardonable frailty?
(Thus the author, M. Eydoux-Demians, continues to relate her
experiences in the hospitals, telling of "The Funeral," "The
First Communion," "Our Priests," "The Little Refugee," and a half
hundred other little tragedies that bring tears to the eyes, a pain
to the heart, and a sense of overwhelming joy that manhood and
womanhood can rise to such noble heights in these days of terrible
suffering.--EDITOR.)