Sac-Au-Dos | Page 9

nail.
"The soup is a little thin to-day," she says with her pretty smile, "so I
bring you some chocolate. Eat it quick while it's hot!"
In spite of the care she lavished upon me, I was bored to death in that
hospital. My friend and I, we had reached that degree of brutishness
that throws you on your bed, trying to kill in animal drowsiness the
long hours of insupportable days. The only distractions offered us
consisted in a breakfast and a dinner composed of boiled beef,
watermelon, prunes, and a finger of wine--the whole of not sufficient
quantity to nourish a man.
Thanks to my ordinary politeness toward the sisters and to the
prescription labels that I wrote for them, I obtained fortunately a cutlet
now and then and a pear picked in the hospital orchard. I was, then, on
the whole, the least to be pitied of all the soldiers packed together,
pell-mell, in the wards, but during the first days I could not succeed
even in swallowing the meagre morning dole. It was inspection hour,
and the doctor chose that moment to perform his operations. The
second day after my arrival he ripped a thigh open from top to bottom;
I heard a piercing cry; I closed my eyes, not enough, however, to avoid
seeing a red stream spurt in great jets on to the doctor's apron. That
morning I could eat no more. Little by little, however, I grew
accustomed to it; soon I contented myself by merely turning my head
away and keeping my soup.
In the mean while the situation became intolerable. We tried, but in
vain, to procure newspapers and books; we were reduced to
masquerading, to donning the hussar's vest for fun. This puerile fooling
quickly wore itself out, and stretching ourselves every twenty minutes,
exchanging a few words, we dive our heads into the bolsters.
There was not much conversation to be drawn from our comrades. The
two artillerymen and the hussar were too sick to talk. The dragoon

swore by the name of heaven, saying nothing, got up every instant,
enveloped in his great white mantle, and went to the wash-bowls,
whose sloppy condition he reported by means of his bare feet. There
were some old saucepans lying about in which the convalescents
pretended to cook, offering their stew in jest to the sisters.
There remained, then, only the soldier of the line: an unfortunate
grocer's clerk, father of a child, called to the army, stricken constantly
by fever, shivering under his bedclothes.
Squatting, tailor-fashion, on our bed, we listen to him recount the battle
in which he was picked up. Cast out near Froeschwiller, on a plain
surrounded with woods, he had seen the red flashes shoot by in
bouquets of white smoke, and he had ducked, trembling, bewildered by
the cannonading, wild with the whistling of the balls. He had marched,
mixed in with the regiments, through the thick mud, not seeing a single
Prussian, not knowing in what direction they were, hearing on all sides
groans, cut by sharp cries, then the ranks of the soldiers placed in front
of him, all at once turned, and in the confusion of flight he had been,
without knowing how, thrown to the ground. He had picked himself up
and had fled, abandoning his gun and knapsack, and at last, worn out
by the forced marches endured for eight days, undermined by fear,
weakened by hunger, he had rested himself in a trench. He had
remained there dazed, inert, stunned by the roar of the bombs, resolved
no longer to defend himself, to move no more; then he thought of his
wife, and, weeping, demanded what he had done that they should make
him suffer so; he picked up, without knowing why, the leaf of a tree,
which he kept, and which he had about him now, for he showed it to us
often, dried and shriveled at the bottom of his pockets.
An officer had passed meanwhile, revolver in hand, had called him
"coward," and threatened to break his head if he did not march. He had
replied: "That would please me above all things. Oh, that this would
end!" But the officer at the very moment he was shaking him on to his
feet was stretched out, the blood bursting, spurting from his neck. Then
fear took possession of him; he fled and succeeded in reaching a road
far off, overrun with the flying, black with troops, furrowed by

gun-carriages whose dying horses broke and crushed the ranks.
They succeeded at last in putting themselves under shelter. The cry of
treason arose from the groups. Old soldiers seemed once more resolved,
but the recruits refused to go on. "Let them go and be killed," they said,
indicating the officers;