Part 35

A slender bridge had just been flung across the abyss.

The thing lasted for a few seconds, and I was still dreaming of it when once more I felt an icy, irrevocable shadow falling upon me--the hostile glance of Herr Spat.

GRACE

It is a common saying that all men are equal in the presence of suffering, but I know very well that this is not true.

Auger! Auger! humble basket-maker of La Charente, who are you, you who seem able to suffer without being unhappy? Why are you touched with grace, whereas Gregoire is not? Why are you the prince of a world in which Gregoire is merely a pariah?

Kind ladies who pass through the wards where the wounded lie, and give them cigarettes and sweet-meats, come with me.

We will go through the large ward on the first floor, where the windows are caressed by the boughs of chestnut-trees. I will not point out Auger, you will give him the lion's share of the cigarettes and sweets of your own accord; but if I don't point out Gregoire, you will leave without, noticing him, and he will get no sweets, and will have nothing to smoke.

It is not because of this that I call Gregoire a pariah. It is because of a much sadder and more intimate thing... Gregoire lacks endurance, he is not what we call a good patient.

In a general way those who tend the wounded call the men who do not give them much trouble "good patients." Judged by this standard, every one in the hospital will tell you that Gregoire is not a good patient.

All day long, he lies on his left side, because of his wound, and stares at the wall. I said to him a day or two after he came:

"I am going to move you and put you over in the other corner; there you will be able to see your comrades."

He answered, in his dull, surly voice:

"It's not worth while. I'm all right here."

"But you can see nothing but the wall."

"That's quite enough."

Scarcely have the stretcher-bearers touched his bed, when Gregoire begins to cry out in a doleful, irritable tone:

"Ah! don't shake me like that! Ah, you mustn't touch me."

The stretcher-bearers I give him are very gentle fellows, and he always has the same: Paffin, a fat shoe-maker with a stammer, and Monsieur Bouin, a professor of mathematics, with a grey beard and very precise movements.

They take hold of Gregoire most carefully to lay him on the stretcher. The wounded man criticises all their movements peevishly:

"Ah! don't turn me over like that. And you must hold my leg better than that!"

The sweat breaks out on Baffin's face. Monsieur Bouin's eye-glasses fall off. At last they bring the patient along.

As soon as he comes into the dressing ward, Gregoire is pale and perspiring. His harsh tawny beard quivers, hair by hair. I divine all this, and say a few words of encouragement to him from afar.

"I shan't be long with you this morning, Gregoire. You won't have time to say 'oof'!"

He preserves a sulky silence, full of reservations. He looks like a condemned criminal awaiting execution. He is so pre-occupied that he does not even answer when the sarcastic Sergeant says as he passes him:

"Ah! here's our grouser."

At last he is laid on the table which the wounded men call the "billiard-table."

Then, things become very trying. I feel at once that whatever I do, Gregoire will suffer. I uncover the wound in his thigh, and he screams. I wash the wound carefully, and he screams. I probe the wound, from which I remove small particles of bone, very gently, and he utters unimaginable yells. I see his tongue trembling in his open mouth. His hands tremble in the hands that hold them, I have an impression that every fibre of his body trembles, that the raw flesh of the wound trembles and retracts. In spite of my determination, this misery affects me, and I wonder whether I too shall begin to tremble sympathetically. I say:

"Try to be patient, my poor Gregoire."