Sac-Au-Dos | Page 3

on his big horse, bent over
the saddle, his hair flying, his waxed mustaches in a ghastly face. A

mutiny was breaking out. Deprived of everything, and hardly
convinced by that marshal that we lacked nothing, we growled in
chorus when he talked of repressing our complaints by force: "Ran,
plan, plan, a hundred thousand men afoot, to Paris, to Paris!"
4 Canrobert, a brave and distinguished veteran, head of the Sixth Corps
of the Army of the Rhine.
Canrobert grew livid, and shouted, planting his horse in the midst of us.
"Hats off to a marshal of France!" Again a howl goes up from the ranks;
then turning bridle, followed in confusion by his staff officers, he
threatened us with his finger, whistling between his separated teeth.
"You shall pay dear for this, gentlemen from Paris!"
Two days after this episode, the icy water of the camp made me so sick
that there was urgent need of my entering the hospital. After the
doctor's visit, I buckle on my knapsack, and under guard of a corporal,
here I am going limping along, dragging my legs and sweating under
my harness. The hospital is gorged with men; they send me back. I then
go to one of the nearest military hospitals; a bed stands empty; I am
admitted. I put down my knapsack at last, and with the expectation that
the major would forbid me to move, I went out for a walk in the little
garden which connected the set of buildings. Suddenly there issued
from the door a man with bristling beard and bulging eyes. He plants
his hands in the pockets of a long dirt-brown cloak, and shouts out from
the distance as soon as he sees me:
"Hey you, man! What are you doing over here?" I approach, I explain
to him the motive that brings me. He thrashes his arms about and
bawls:
"Go in again! You have no right to walk about in this garden until they
give you your costume."
I go back into the room, a nurse arrives and brings me a great military
coat, pantaloons, old shoes without heels, and a cap like a nightcap. I
look at myself, thus grotesquely dressed, in my little mirror. Good
Heavens, what a face and what an outfit! With my haggard eyes and

my sallow complexion, with my hair cut short, and my nose with the
bumps shining; with my long mouse-gray coat, my pants stained russet,
my great hedless shoes, my colossal cotton cap, I am prodigiously ugly.
I could not keep from laughing. I turn my head toward the side of my
bed neighbor, a tall boy of Jewish type, who is sketching my portrait in
a notebook. We become friends at once; I tell him to call me Eugène
Lejantel; he responds by telling me to call him Francis Emonot; we
recall to each other this and that painter; we enter into a discussion of
esthetics and forget our misfortune. Night arrives; they portion out to us
a dish of boiled meat dotted black with a few lentils, they pour us out
brimming cups of coco-clairet, and I undress, enchanted at stretching
myself out in a bed without keeping my clothes and my shoes on.
The next morning I am awakened at about six o'clock by a great fracas
at the door and a clatter of voices. I sit up in bed, I rub my eyes, and I
see the gentleman of the night before, still dressed in his wrapper,
brown the color of cachou, who advances majestically, followed by a
train of nurses. It was the major. Scarcely inside, he rolls his dull green
eyes from right to left and from left to right, plunges his hands in his
pockets and bawls:
"Number One, show your leg--your dirty leg. Eh, it's in a bad shape,
that leg, that sore runs like a fountain; lotion of bran and water, lint,
half-rations, a strong licorice tea. Number Two, show your throat--your
dirty throat. It's getting worse and worse, that throat; the tonsils will be
cut out to-morrow."
"But, doctor--"
"Eh, I am not asking anything from you, am I? Say one word and I'll
put you on a diet."
"But, at least--"
"Put that man on a diet. Write: diet, gargles, strong licorice tea."
In that vein he passed all the sick in review, prescribing for all, the
syphilitics and the wounded, the fevered and the dysentery patients his

strong licorice tea. He stopped in front of me, stared into my face, tore
off my covering, punched my stomach with his fist, ordered
albuminated water for me, the inevitable tea; and went out snorting and
dragging his feet.
Life was difficult with the men who were about us. There were
twenty-one in our sleeping quarters.