Part 17

"Well, only yellow spirit."

"That's the strongest of all. It stings, but it is first-rate for strengthening the flesh. I always get ether."

"Ether stinks so!"

"Yes, it stinks, but one gets used to it. It warms the blood. Don't you have tubes any longer?"

"They took out the last on Tuesday."

"Mine have been taken away, too. Wait a minute, old chap, let me look at it. Does it itch?"

"Yes, it feels like rats gnawing at me."

"If it feels like rats, it's all right. Mine feels like rats, too. Don't you want to scratch?"

"Yes, but they say I mustn't."

"No, of course, you mustn't.... But you can always tap on the dressing a little with your finger. That is a relief."

Lapointe leans over and examines Ropiteau's large wound.

"Old chap, it's getting on jolly well. Same here; I'll show you presently. It's red, the skin is beginning to grow again. But it is thin, very thin."

Lapointe sits down to have his dressing cut away, then he makes a half turn towards Ropiteau.

"You see--getting on famously."

Ropiteau admires unreservedly.

"Yes, you're right. It looks first-rate."

"And you know... such a beastly mess came out of it."

At this moment, the busy forceps cover up the wounds with the dressing, and the operation comes to an end.

"So long!" says Lapointe to his elbow, casting a farewell glance at it. And he adds, as he gets to the door:

"Now there are only the damned fingers that won't get on. But I don't care. I've made up my mind to be a postman."

XVII

Bouchenton was not very communicative. We knew nothing of his past history. As to his future plans, he revealed them by one day presenting to the head doctor for his signature a paper asking leave to open a Moorish cafe at Medea after his recovery, a request the head doctor felt himself unable to endorse.

Bouchenton had undergone a long martyrdom in order to preserve an arm from which the bone had been partially removed, but from which a certain amount of work might still be expected. He screamed like the others, and his cry was "Mohabdi! Mohabdi!" When the forceps came near, he cried: "Don't put them in!" And after this he maintained a silence made up of dignity and indolence. During the day he was to be seen wandering about the wards, holding up his ghostly muffled arm with his sound hand. In the evening, he learned to play draughts, because it is a serious, silent game, and requires consideration.

Now one day when Bouchenton, seated on a chair, was waiting for his wound to be dressed, the poor adjutant Figuet began to complain in a voice that was no more than the shadow of a voice, just as his body was no more than the shadow of a body.

Figuet was crawling at the time up the slopes of a Calvary where he was soon to fall once more, never to rise again.

The most stupendous courage and endurance foundered then in a despair for which there seemed henceforth to be no possible alleviation.

Figuet, I say, began to complain, and every one in the ward feigned to be engrossed in his occupation, and to hear nothing, because when such a man began to groan, the rest felt that the end of all things had come.

Bouchenton turned his head, looked at the adjutant, seized his flabby arm carefully with his right hand, and set out. Walking with little short steps he came to the table where the suffering man lay.