Sac-Au-Dos | Page 8

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!"
I exclaim that never have I suffered so much.

He sounds my stomach. "But you are better," he murmurs; "the
stomach is not so hard." I protest--he seems astonished, the interne then
says to him in an undertone:
"We ought perhaps to give him an injection; and we have here neither
syringe nor stomach-pump; if we send him to the hospital--?"
"Come, now, that's an idea!" says the good man, delighted at getting rid
of me, and then and there he signs the order for my admission. Joyfully
I buckle on my knapsack, and under guard of one of the servants of the
lyceum I make my entrance at the hospital. I find Francis again! By
incredible good luck the St. Vincent corridor, where he sleeps, in
default of a room in the wards, contains one empty bed next to his. We
are at last reunited! In addition to our two beds, five cots stretch, one
after the other, along the yellow glazed walls. For occupants they have
a soldier of the line, two artillerymen, a dragoon, and a hussar. The rest
of the hospital is made up of certain old men, crack-brained and
weak-bodied, some young men, rickety or bandy-legged, and a great
number of soldiers--wrecks from MacMahon's army--who, after being
floated on from one military hospital to another, had come to be
stranded on this bank. Francis and I, we are the only ones who wear the
uniform of the Seine militia; our bed neighbors were good enough
fellows; one, to tell the truth, quite as insignificant as another; they
were, for the most part, the sons of peasants or farmers called to serve
under the flag after the declaration of war.
While I am taking off my vest, there comes a sister, so frail, so pretty
that I can not keep from looking at her; the beautiful big eyes! the long
blond lashes! the pretty teeth! She asks me why I have left the lyceum;
I explain to her in roundabout phrases how the absence of a forcing
pump caused me to be sent back from the college. She smiles gently
and says to me: "Ah, sir soldier, you could have called the thing by its
name; we are used to everything." I should think she was used to
everything, unfortunate woman, for the soldiers constrained themselves
but little in delivering themselves of their indiscreet amenities before
her. Yet never did I see her blush. She passed among them mute, her
eyes lowered, seeming not to hear the coarse jokes retailed around her.

Heavens! how she spoiled me! I see her now in the morning, as the sun
breaks on the stone floor the shadows of the window bars, approaching
slowly from the far end of the corridor, the great wings of her bonnet
flapping At her face-She comes close to my bed with a dish that
smokes, and on the edge of which glistens her well-trimmed finger