Evening arrives; we must go back, however. The sister who is in charge
of the old men’s ward says to us in a small flute-like voice:
“Soldiers, gentlemen, you were very cold last night, but you are going
to have a good bed.”
And she leads us into a great room where three night lamps, dimly
lighted, hang from the ceiling. I have a white bed, I sink with delight
between the sheets that still smell fresh with the odor of washing.
We hear nothing but the breathing or the snoring of the sleepers. I am
quite warm, my eyes close, I know no longer where I am, when a prolonged
chuckling awakes me. I open one eye and I perceive at the foot of my bed
an individual who is looking down at me. I sit up in bed. I see before
me an old man, tall, lean, his eyes haggard, lips slobbering into a
rough beard. I ask what he wants of me. No answer! I cry out: “Go away!
Let me sleep!”
He shows me his fist. I suspect him to be a lunatic. I roll up my towel,
at the end of which I quietly twist a knot; he advances one step; I leap
to the floor; I parry the fisticuff he aims at me, and with the towel I
deal him a return blow full in the left eye. He sees thirty candles,
he throws himself at me; I draw back and let fly a vigorous kick in
the stomach. He tumbles, carrying with him a chair that rebounds;
the dormitory is awakened; Francis runs up in his shirt to lend me
assistance; the sister arrives; the nurses dart upon the madman, whom
they flog and succeed with great difficulty in putting in bed again. The
aspect of the dormitory was eminently ludicrous; to the gloom of faded
rose, which the dying night lamps had spread around them, succeeded the
flaming of three lanterns. The black ceiling, with its rings of light
that danced above the burning wicks, glittered now with its tints of
freshly spread plaster. The sick men, a collection of Punch and Judies
without age, had clutched the piece of wood that hung at the end of a
cord above their beds, hung on to it with one hand, and with the other
made gestures of terror. At that sight my anger cools, I split with
laughter, the painter suffocates, it is only the sister who preserves
her gravity and succeeds by force of threats and entreaties in restoring
order in the room.
Night came to an end, for good or ill; in the morning at six o’clock
the rattle of a drum assembled us, the director called off the roll. We
start for Rouen, Arrived in that city, an officer tells the unfortunate
man in charge of us that the hospital is full and can not take us in.
Meanwhile we have an hour to wait. I throw my knapsack down into a
corner of the station, and though my stomach is on fire, we are off,
Francis and I, wandering at random, in ecstasies before the church of
Saint-Ouen, in wonder before the old houses. We admire so much and
so long that the hour had long since passed before we even thought of
looking for the station again. “It’s a long time since your comrades
departed,” one of the employees of the railroad said to us; “they are in
Evreux.” “The devil! The next train doesn’t go until nine o’clock--Come,
let’s get some dinner!”
When we arrived at Evreux, midnight had come. We could not present
ourselves at a hospital at such an hour; we would have the appearance
of malefactors. The night is superb, we cross the city and we find
ourselves in the open fields. It was the time of haying, the piles were
in stacks. We spy out a little stack in a field, we hollow out there two
comfortable nests, and I do not know whether it is the reminiscent odor
of our couch or the penetrating perfume of the woods that stirs us, but
we feel the need of airing our defunct love affairs. The subject was
inexhaustible. Little by little, however, words become fewer, enthusiasm
dies out, we fall asleep.
“Sacre bleu!” cries my neighbor, as he stretches himself. “What time
can it be?” I awake in turn. The sun will not be late in rising, for the
great blue curtain is laced at the horizon with a fringe of rose.
What misery! It will be necessary now to go knock at the door of the
hospital, to sleep in wards impregnated with that heavy smell through
which returns, like an obstinate refrain, the acrid flower of powder of
iodoform! All sadly we take our way to the hospital again. They open to
us but alas! one only of us is admitted, Francis;--and I, they send me
on to the lyceum. This life is no longer possible, I meditate an escape,
the house surgeon on duty comes down into the courtyard. I show him my
law-school diploma; he knows Paris, the Latin Quarter. I explain to him
my situation. “It has come to an absolute necessity.” I tell him “that
either Francis comes to the lyceum or that I go to rejoin him at the
hospital.” He thinks it over, and in the evening, coming close to my
bed, he slips these words into my ear! “Tell them tomorrow morning
that your sufferings increase.” The next day, in fact, at about seven
o’clock, the doctor makes his appearance; a good, an excellent man,
who had but two faults; that of odorous teeth and that of desiring to
get rid of his patients at any cost. Every morning the follow-ing scene
took place:
“Ah, ha! the fine fellow,” he cries, “what an air he has! good color,
no fever. Get up and go take a good cup of coffee; but no fooling,
you know! don’t go running after the girls; I will sign for you your
_Exeat_; you will return to-morrow to your regiment.”
Sick or not sick, he sent back three a day. That morning he stops in
front of me and says:
“Ah! saperlotte, my boy, you look better!”