Part 45

I know quite well that there is hope here.

So that in hell too there must be hope.

But lately, Death was the cruel stranger, the stealthy-footed visitor.... Now, it is the romping dog of the house.

Do you remember the days when the human body seemed made for joy, when each of its organs represented a function and a delight? Now, each part of the body evokes the evil that threatens it, and the special suffering it engenders.

Apart from this, it is well adapted for its part in the laborious drama: the foot to carry a man to the attack; the arm to work the cannon; the eye to watch the adversary or adjust the weapon.

But lately, Death was no part of life. We talked of it covertly. Its image was at once painful and indecent, calculated to upset the plans and projects of existence. It worked as far as possible in obscurity, silence and retirement. We disguised it with symbols; we announced it in laborious paraphrases, marked by a kind of shame.

To-day Death is closely bound up with the things of life. And this is true, not so much because its daily operations are on a vast scale, because it chooses the youngest and the healthiest among us, because it has become a kind of sacred institution, but more especially because it has become a thing so ordinary that it no longer causes us to suspend our usual activities, as it used to do: we eat and drink beside the dead, we sleep amidst the dying, we laugh and sing in the company of corpses.

And how, indeed, can it be otherwise? You know quite well that man cannot live without eating, drinking, and sleeping, nor without laughing and singing.

Ask all those who are suffering their hard Calvary here. They are gentle and courageous, they sympathise with the pain of others; but they must eat when the soup comes round, sleep, if they can, during the long night; and try to laugh again when the ward is quiet, and the corpse of the morning has been carried out.

Death remains a great thing, but one with which one's relations have become frequent and intimate. Like the king who shows himself at his toilet, Death is still powerful, but it has become familiar and slightly degraded.

Lerouet died just now. We closed his eyes, tied up his chin, then pulled out the sheet to cover the corpse while it was waiting for the stretcher-bearers.

"Can't you eat anything?" said Mulet to Maville. Maville, who is very young and shy, hesitates: "I can't get it down."

And after a pause, he adds: "I can't bear to see such things."

Mulet wipes his plate calmly and says: "Yes, sometimes it used to take away my appetite too, so much so that I used to be sick. But I have got accustomed to it now."

Pouchet gulps down his coffee with a sort of feverish eagerness.

"One feels glad to get off with the loss of a leg when one sees that."

"One must live," adds Mulet.

"Well, for all the pleasure one gets out of life...."

Beliard is the speaker. He had a bullet in the bowel, yet we hope to get him well soon. But his whole attitude betrays indifference. He smokes a great deal, and rarely speaks. He has no reason to despair, and he knows that he can resume his ordinary life. But familiarity with Death, which sometimes makes life seem so precious, occasionally ends by producing a distaste for it, or rather a deep weariness of it.

A whole nation, ten whole nations are learning to live in Death's company. Humanity has entered the wild beast's cage, and sits there with the patient courage of the lion-tamer.

Men of my country, I learn to know you better every day, and from having looked you in the face at the height of your sufferings, I have conceived a religious hope for the future of our race. It is mainly owing to my admiration for your resignation, your native goodness, your serene confidence in better times to come that I can still believe in the moral future of the world.

At the very hour when the most natural instinct inclines the world to ferocity, you preserve, on your beds of suffering, a beauty, a purity of outlook which goes far to atone for the monstrous crime. Men of France, your simple grandeur of soul redeems humanity from its greatest crime, and raises it from its deep abyss.

We are told how you bear the misery of the battle-field, how in the discouraging cold and mud, you await the hour of your cruel duty, how you rush forward to meet the mortal blow, through the unimaginable tumult of peril.

But when you come here, there are further sufferings in store for you; and I know with what courage you endure them.

The doors of the Chateau close on a new life for you, a life that is also one of perpetual peril and contest. I help you in this contest, and I see how gallantly you wage it.

Not a wrinkle in your faces escapes me. Not one of your pains, not one of the tremors of your lacerated flesh. And I write them all down, just as I note your simple words, your cries, your sighs of hope, as I also note the expression of your faces at the solemn hour when man speaks no more.

Not one of your words leaves me unmoved; there is not one of your actions which is not worthy of record. All must contribute to the history of our great ordeal.

For it is not enough to give oneself up to the sacred duty of succour. It is not enough to apply the beneficent knife to the wound, or to change the dressings skilfully and carefully.