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 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
THE NEW BOOK 
 OF MARTYRS 
 
 From the French 
 of 
 
 GEORGES DUHAMEL 
 
 BY 
 
 FLORENCE SIMMONDS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1918, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 APR 22 1918 
 
 ©CU497044 
 
 •a. «* t 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACE 
 
 THROUGHOUT OUR LAND 9 
 
 THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU ... 12 
 
 MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 42 
 
 THE DEATH OF MERCIER . . . . • . . 96 
 
 VERDUN IOI 
 
 THE SACRIFICE * . . . ^ . . • • • I36 
 
 THE THIRD SYMPHONY ... . . . . 1 63 
 
 GRACE ; 167 
 
 NIGHTS IN ARTOIS . . . . . . . . . 185 
 
THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
THE NEW BOOK OF 
 MARTYRS 
 
 THROUGHOUT OUR LAND 
 
 FROM the disfigured regions where the 
 cannon reigns supreme, to the moun- 
 tains of the South, to the ocean, to 
 the glittering shores of the inland sea, the cry 
 of wounded men echoes throughout the land, 
 and a vast kindred cry seems to rise responsive 
 from the whole world. 
 
 There is no French town in which the 
 wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not 
 bleeding. Not one which has not accepted 
 the duty of assuaging something of the sum of 
 suffering, just as it bears its part in the sum 
 of mourning; not one which may not hear 
 within its own walls an echo of the greater 
 lamentation swelling and muttering where 
 the conflict seems to rage unceasingly. The 
 
 9 
 
10 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 waves of war break upon the whole surface of 
 the country, and like the incoming tide, strew 
 it with wreckage. 
 
 In the beds which the piety of the public 
 has prepared on every side, stricken men 
 await the verdict of fate. The beds are white, 
 the bandages are spotless; many faces smile 
 until the hour when they are flushed with 
 fever, and until that same fever makes a 
 whole nation of wounded tremble on the 
 Continent. 
 
 Some one who had been visiting the wounded 
 said to me: "The beds are really very white, 
 the dressings are clean, all the patients seem 
 to be playing cards, reading the papers, eating 
 dainties; they are simple, often very gentle, 
 they don't look very unhappy. They all tell 
 the same story. . . . The war has not changed 
 them much. One can recognise them all." 
 
 Are you sure that you recognise them? You 
 have just been looking at them, are you sure 
 that you have seen them? 
 
 Under their bandages are wounds you cannot 
 imagine. Below the wounds, in the depths of 
 the mutilated flesh, a soul, strange and furtive, 
 is stirring in feverish exaltation, a soul which 
 
THROUGHOUT THE LAND 11 
 
 does not readily reveal itself, which expresses 
 itself artlessly, but which I would fain make 
 you understand. 
 
 In these days, when nothing retains its 
 former semblance, all these men are no longer 
 those you so lately knew. Suffering has 
 roused them from the sleep of gentle life, 
 and every day fills them with a terrible in- 
 toxication. They are now something more 
 than themselves; those we loved were merely 
 happy shadows. 
 
 Let us lose none of their humble words, let 
 us note their slightest gestures, and tell me, 
 tell me that we will think of them together, 
 now and later, when we realise the misery 
 of the times and the magnitude of their 
 sacrifice. 
 
THE STORY OF CARRE AND 
 LERONDEAU 
 
 THEY came in like two parcels dis- 
 patched by the same post, two clum- 
 sy, squalid parcels, badly packed, 
 and damaged in transit. Two human forms 
 rolled up in linens and woollens, strapped into 
 strange instruments, one of which enclosed the 
 whole man, like a coffin of zinc and wire. 
 
 They seemed to be of no particular age ; or 
 rather, each might have been a thousand and 
 more, the age of swaddled mummies in the 
 depths of sarcophagi. 
 
 We washed, combed, and peeled them, and 
 laid them very cautiously between clean 
 sheets; then we found that one had the look 
 of an old man, and that the other was still 
 
 a boy. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Their beds face each other in the same grey 
 room. All who enter it notice them at once; 
 their infinite misery gives them an air of 
 kinship. Compared with them, the other 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 13 
 
 wounded seem well and happy. And in this 
 abode of suffering, they are kings; their 
 couches are encircled by the respect and si- 
 lence due to majesty. 
 
 I approach the younger man and bend over 
 him. 
 
 "What is your name?" 
 
 The answer is a murmur accompanied by an 
 imploring look. What I hear sounds like : 
 Mahihehondo. It is a sigh with modulations. 
 
 It takes me a week to discover that the 
 boyish patient is called Marie Lerondeau. 
 
 The bed opposite is less confused. I see a 
 little toothless head. From out the ragged 
 beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone, 
 but touching and almost melodious. The man 
 who lies there is called Carre. 
 
 They did not come from the same battle- 
 field, but they were hit almost at the same time, 
 and they have the same wound. Each has a 
 fractured thigh. Chance brought them to- 
 gether in the same distant ambulance, where 
 their wounds festered side by side. Since then 
 they have kept together, till now they lie 
 
14 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 enfolded by the blue radiance of the Master's 
 gaze. 
 
 He looks at both, and shakes his head 
 silently; truly, a bad business! He can but 
 ask himself which of the two will die first, so 
 great are the odds against the survival of 
 either. 
 
 The white-bearded man considers them in 
 silence, turning in his hand the cunning knife. 
 
 * * * 
 
 We can know nothing till after this grave 
 debate. The soul must withdraw, for this is 
 not its hour. Now the knife must divide the 
 flesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work 
 completely. 
 
 So the two comrades go to sleep, in. that 
 dreadful slumber wherein each man resembles 
 his own corpse. Henceforth we enter upon 
 the struggle. We have laid our grasp upon 
 these two bodies; we shall not let them be 
 snatched from us easily. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The nausea of the awakening, the sharp 
 agony of the first hours are over, and I begin 
 to discover my new friends. 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 15 
 
 This requires time and patience. The dress- 
 ing hour is propitious. The man lies naked 
 on the table. One sees him as a whole, as 
 also those great gaping wounds, the objects of 
 so many hopes and fears. 
 
 The afternoon is no less favourable to com- 
 munion, but that is another matter. Calm 
 has come to them, and these two creatures 
 have ceased to be nothing but a tortured leg 
 and a screaming mouth. 
 
 Carre went ahead at once. He made a 
 veritable bound. Whereas Lerondeau seemed 
 still wrapped in a kind of plaintive stupor, 
 Carre was already enfolding me in a deep 
 afectionate gaze. He said: 
 
 "You must do all that is necessary/' 
 
 Lerondeau can as yet only murmur a half 
 articulate phrase: 
 
 "Mustn't hurt me." 
 
 As soon as I could distinguish and under- 
 stand the boy's words, I called him by his 
 Christian name. I would say: 
 
 "How are you, Marie?" or "I am pleased 
 with you, Marie." 
 
16 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 This familiarity suits him, as does my use 
 of "thee" and "thou" in talking to him. 
 He very soon guessed that I speak thus only 
 to those who suffer most, and for whom I have 
 a special tenderness. So I say to him: "Marie, 
 the wound looks very well to-day." And 
 every one in the hospital calls him Marie as 
 I do. 
 
 When he is not behaving well, I say: 
 "Come, be sensible, Lerondeau." 
 His eyes fill with tears at once. One day I 
 was obliged to try "Monsieur Lerondeau," 
 and he was so hurt that I had to retract on 
 the spot. However, he now refrains from 
 grumbling at his orderly, and screaming too 
 loudly during the dressing of his wound, for he 
 knows that the day I say to him "Be quiet, 
 Monsieur" — -just Monsieur — our relations will 
 be exceedingly strained. 
 
 From the first, Carre bore himself like a 
 man. When I entered the dressing ward, I 
 found the two lying side by side on stretchers 
 which had been placed on the floor. Carre's 
 emaciated arm emerged from under his 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 17 
 blanket, and he began to lecture Marie on the 
 subject of hope and courage. ... I listened 
 to the quavering voice, I looked at the toothless 
 face, lit up by a smile, and I felt a curious 
 choking in my throat, while Lerondeau blinked 
 like a child who is being scolded. Then I 
 went out of the room, because this was a 
 matter between those two lying on the ground, 
 and had nothing to do with me, a robust 
 person, standing on my feet. 
 
 Since then, Carre has proved that he had a 
 right to preach courage to young Lerondeau. 
 
 While the dressing is being prepared, he lies 
 on the ground with the others, waiting his 
 turn, and says very little. He looks gravely 
 round him, and smiles when his eyes meet 
 mine. He is not proud, but he is not one of 
 those who are ready to chatter to every one. 
 One does not come into this ward to talk, but 
 to suffer, and Carre is bracing himself to suffer 
 as decently as possible. 
 
 When he is not quite sure of himself, he 
 warns me, saying: 
 
 "I am not as strong as usual to-day." 
 
18 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Nine times out of ten, he is "as strong as 
 usual," but he is so thin, so wasted, so reduced 
 by his mighty task, that he is sometimes 
 obliged to beat a retreat. He does it with 
 honour, with dignity. He has just said: "My 
 knee is terribly painful," and the sentence 
 almost ends in a scream. Then, feeling that 
 he is about to howl like the others, Carre 
 begins to sing. 
 
 The first time this happened I did not quite 
 understand what was going on. He repeated 
 the one phrase again and again: "Oh, the 
 pain in my knee!" And gradually I became 
 aware that this lament was becoming a real 
 melody, and for five long minutes Carre im- 
 provised a terrible, wonderful, heart-rending 
 song on "the pain in his knee." Since then 
 this has become a habit, and he begins to sing 
 suddenly as soon as he feels that he can no 
 longer keep silence. 
 
 Among his improvisations he will introduce 
 old airs. I prefer not to look at his face when 
 he begins: "II n'est ni beau ni grand mon 
 verre." Indeed, I have a good excuse for 
 not looking at it, for I am very busy with 
 his poor leg, which gives me much anxiety, 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 19 
 and has to be handled with infinite precau- 
 tions. 
 
 I do "all that is necessary," introducing the 
 burning tincture of iodine several times. Carre 
 feels the sting; and when, passing by his cor- 
 ner an hour later, I listen for a moment, I 
 hear him slowly chanting in a trembling but 
 melodious voice the theme: "He gave me 
 tincture of iodine." 
 
 Carre is proud of showing courage. 
 
 This morning he seemed so weak that I tried 
 to be as quick as possible and to keep my ears 
 shut. But presently a stranger came into the 
 ward. Carre turned his head slightly, saw 
 the visitor, and frowning, began to sing: 
 
 "II n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre." 
 
 The stranger looked at him with tears in his 
 eyes, but the more he looked, the more reso- 
 lutely Carre smiled, clutching the edges of the 
 table with his two quivering hands. 
 
 Lerondeau has good strong teeth. Carre 
 has nothing but black stumps. This distresses 
 
20 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 me, for a man with a fractured thigh needs 
 good teeth. 
 
 Lerondeau is still at death's door, but 
 though moribund, he can eat. He attacks his 
 meat with a well-armed jaw; he bites with 
 animal energy, and seems to fasten upon any- 
 thing substantial. 
 
 Carre, for his part, is well-inclined to eat; 
 but what can he do with his old stumps? 
 
 "Besides," he says, "I was never very car- 
 
 nivorous." 
 
 Accordingly, he prefers to smoke. In view 
 of lying perpetually upon his back, he ar- 
 ranged the cover of a cardboard box upon his 
 chest; the cigarette ash falls into this, and 
 Carre smokes without moving, in cleanly fash- 
 ion. 
 
 I look at the ash, the smoke, the yellow, 
 emaciated face, and reflect sadly that it is not 
 enough to have the will to live; one must 
 have teeth. 
 
 Not every one knows how to suffer, and even 
 when we know, we must set about it the right 
 way, if we are to come off with honour. As 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 21 
 
 soon as he is on the table, Carre looks round 
 him and asks: 
 
 "Isn't there any one to squeeze my head 
 to-day?" 
 
 If there is no answer, he repeats anxiously: 
 
 "Who is going to squeeze my head to-day?" 
 
 Then a nurse approaches, takes his head 
 
 between her hands and presses. ... I can 
 
 begin; as soon as some one is "squeezing his 
 
 head" Carre is good. 
 
 Lerondeau's method is different. He wants 
 some one to hold his hands. When there is 
 no one to do this, he shrieks: "I shall fall." 
 It is no use to tell him that he is on a solid 
 table, and that he need not be afraid. He 
 gropes about for the helpful hands, and cries, 
 the sweat breaking out on his brow: "I know 
 I shall fall." Then I get some one to come 
 and hold his hands, for suffering, at any rate, 
 is a reality. . . . 
 
 Each sufferer has his characteristic cry when 
 the dressing is going on. The poor have only 
 one, a simple cry that does service for them 
 all. It makes one think of the women who, 
 
22 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 when they are bringing a child into the world, 
 repeat, at every pain, the one complaint they 
 have adopted. 
 
 Carre has a great many varied cries, and he 
 does not say the same thing when the dress- 
 ing is removed, and when the forceps are 
 applied. 
 
 At the supreme moment he exclaims: "Oh, 
 the pain in my knee!" 
 
 Then, when the anguish abates, he shakes 
 his head and repeats: 
 
 "Oh, that wretched knee!" 
 
 When it is the turn of the thigh, he is 
 exasperated. 
 
 "Now it's this thigh again!" 
 
 And he repeats this incessantly, from second 
 to second. Then we go on to the wound 
 under his heel, and Carre begins: 
 
 "Well, what is wrong with the poor heel?" 
 
 Finally, when he is tired of singing, he 
 murmurs softly and regularly: 
 
 "They don't know how that wretched knee 
 hurts me . . . they don't know how it hurts 
 
 me." 
 
 Lerondeau, who is, and always will be, a 
 little boy compared with Carre, is very poor 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 23 
 
 in the matter of cries. But when he hears his 
 friend's complaints, he checks his own cries, 
 and borrows them. Accordingly, I hear him 
 beginning : 
 
 "Oh, my poor knee ! . . . They don't know 
 how it hurts!" 
 
 One morning when he was shouting this at 
 the top of his voice, I asked him gravely: 
 
 "Why do you make the same complaints 
 as Carre?" 
 
 Marie is only a peasant, but he showed me 
 a face that was really offended: 
 
 "It's not true. I don't say the same 
 things." 
 
 I said no more, for there are no souls so 
 rugged that they cannot feel certain stings. 
 
 Marie has told me the story of his life and 
 of his campaign. As he is not very eloquent, 
 it was for the most part a confused murmur 
 with an ever-recurring protestation: 
 
 "I was a good one to work, you know, 
 strong as a horse." 
 
 Yet I can hardly imagine that there was 
 once a Marie Lerondeau who was a robust 
 
24 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 young fellow, standing firm and erect between 
 the handles of a plough. I know him only as 
 a man lying on his back, and I even find it 
 difficult to picture to myself what his shape 
 and aspect will be when we get him on his 
 feet again. 
 
 Marie did his duty bravely under fire. u He 
 stayed alone with the wagons and when he 
 was wounded, the Germans kicked him with 
 their heavy boots." These are the salient 
 points of the interrogatory. 
 
 Now and again Lerondeau's babble ceases, 
 and he looks up to the ceiling, for this takes 
 the place of distance and horizon to those who 
 lie upon their backs. After a long, light silence, 
 he looks at me again, and repeats: 
 
 "I must have been pretty brave to stay alone 
 with the wagons!" 
 
 True enough, Lerondeau was brave, and I 
 take care to let people know it. When 
 strangers come in during the dressings, I show 
 them Marie, who is making ready to groan, 
 and say: 
 
 "This is Marie — Marie Lerondeau, you 
 know. He has a fractured thigh, but he is 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 25 
 
 a very brave fellow. He stayed alone with 
 the wagons." 
 
 The visitors nod their heads admiringly, and 
 Marie controls himself. He blushes a little, 
 and the muscles of his neck swell with pride. 
 He makes a sign with his eyes as if to say: 
 "Yes, indeed, alone, all alone with the wag- 
 ons." And meanwhile, the dressing has been 
 nearly finished. 
 
 The whole world must know that Marie 
 stayed alone with the wagons. I intend to 
 pin a report of this on the Government pen- 
 sion certificate. 
 
 Carre was only under fire once, and was hit 
 almost immediately. He is much annoyed at 
 this, for he had a good stock of courage, and 
 now he has to waste it within the walls of a 
 hospital. 
 
 He advanced through a huge beetroot field, 
 and he ran with the others towards a fine 
 white mist. All of a sudden, crack, he 
 fell! His thigh was fractured. He fell 
 among the thick leaves, on the waterlogged 
 earth. 
 
26 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Shortly afterwards his sergeant passed again, 
 and said to him: 
 
 "We are going back to our trench, they 
 shall come and fetch you later." 
 
 Carre merely said: 
 
 "Put my haversack under my head." 
 
 Evening was coming on ; he prepared, grave- 
 ly, to spend the night among the beetroots. 
 And there he spent it, alone with a cold driz- 
 zling rain, meditating seriously until morning. 
 
 It was fortunate that Carre brought such a 
 stock of courage into hospital, for he needs it 
 all. Successive operations and dressings make 
 large drafts upon the most generous supplies. 
 
 They put Carre upon the table, and I note 
 an almost joyful resolution in his look. To- 
 day he has "all his strength, to the last ounce." 
 
 But just to-day, I have but little to do, not 
 much suffering to inflict. He has scarcely 
 knitted his brows, when I begin to fasten up 
 the apparatus again. 
 
 Then Carre's haggard face breaks into a 
 smile, and he exclaims: 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 27 
 
 "Finished already? Put some more ether 
 on, make it sting a bit at least." 
 
 Carre knows that the courage of which 
 there was no need to-day will not, perhaps, be 
 available to-morrow. 
 
 And to-morrow, and for many days after, 
 Carre will have to be constantly calling up 
 those reserves of the soul which help the body 
 to suffer while it waits for the good offices of 
 Nature, 
 
 The swimmer adrift on the open seas meas- 
 ures his strength, and strives with all his 
 muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is 
 he to do when there is no land on the 
 horizon, and none beyond it? 
 
 This leg, infected to the very marrow, 
 seems to be slowly devouring the man to 
 whom it belongs; we look at it anxiously, 
 and the white-haired Master fixes two small 
 light-blue eyes upon it, eyes accustomed to 
 appraise the things of life, yet, for the mo- 
 ment, hesitant. 
 
 I speak to Carre in veiled words of the 
 troublesome, gangrenous leg. He gives a 
 
28 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 toothless laugh, and settles the question at 
 once. 
 
 "Well, if the wretched thing is a nuisance, 
 we shall have to get rid of it." 
 
 After this consent, we shall no doubt make 
 up our minds to do so. 
 
 Meanwhile Lerondeau is creeping steadily 
 towards healing. 
 
 Lying on his back, bound up in bandages 
 and a zinc trough, and imprisoned by cushions, 
 he nevertheless looks like a ship which the 
 tide will set afloat at dawn. 
 
 He is putting on flesh, yet, strange to 
 say, he seems to get lighter and lighter. 
 He is learning not to groan, not because 
 his frail soul is gaining strength, but be- 
 cause the animal is better fed and more 
 robust. 
 
 His ideas of strength of mind are indeed 
 very elementary. As soon as I hear his first 
 cry, in the warm room where his wound is 
 dressed, I give him an encouraging look, and 
 say: 
 
 "Be brave, Marie! Try to be strong!" 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 29 
 
 Then he knits his brows, makes a grimace, 
 and asks: 
 
 "Ought I to say 'By God!'?" 
 
 The zinc trough in which Marie's shattered 
 leg has been lying has lost its shape; it has 
 become oxydised and is split at the edges; 
 so I have decided to change it. 
 
 I take it away, look at it, and throw it 
 into a corner. Marie follows my movements 
 with a scared glance. While I am adjusting 
 the new trough, a solid, comfortable one, but 
 rather different in appearance, he casts an 
 eloquent glance at the discarded one, and his 
 eyes fill with copious tears. 
 
 This change is a small matter; but in the 
 lives of the sick, there are no small things. 
 
 Lerondeau will weep for the old zinc frag- 
 ment for two days, and it will be a long time 
 before he ceases to look distrustfully at the 
 new trough, and to criticise it in those minute 
 and bitter terms which only a connoisseur can 
 understand or invent. 
 
 Carre, on the other hand, cannot succeed 
 in carrying along his body by the generous 
 
SO THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 impulse of his soul. Everything about him 
 save his eyes and his liquid voice foreshadow 
 the corpse. Throughout the winter days and 
 the long sleepless nights, he looks as if he were 
 dragging along a derelict. 
 
 He strains at it . . . with his poignant 
 songs and his brave words which falter now, 
 and often die away in a moan. 
 
 I had to do his dressing in the presence of 
 Marie. The amount of work to be got 
 through, and the cramped quarters made this 
 necessary. Marie was grave and attentive as 
 if he were taking a lesson, and, indeed, it was 
 a lesson in patience and courage. But all at 
 once, the teacher broke down. In the middle 
 of the dressing, Carre opened his lips, and in 
 spite of himself, began to complain without 
 restraint or measure, giving up the struggle 
 in despair. 
 
 Lerondeau listened, anxious and uneasy; and 
 Carre, knowing that Marie was listening, con- 
 tinued to lament, like one who has lost all 
 sense of shame. 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 31 
 
 Lerondeau called me by a motion of his 
 eyelids. He said: 
 
 "Carre! . . ." 
 
 And he added: 
 
 "I saw his slough. Lord! he is bad." 
 
 Lerondeau has a good memory for medical 
 terms. Yes, he saw Carre's slough. He him- 
 self has the like on his posterior and on his 
 heel; but the tear that trembles in the corner 
 of his eye is certainly for Carre. 
 
 And then, he knows, he feels that his wounds 
 are going to heal. 
 
 But it is bad for Marie to hear another 
 complaining before his own turn. 
 
 He comes to the table very ill-disposed. 
 His nerves have been shaken and are un- 
 usually irritable. 
 
 At the first movement, he begins with sighs 
 and those "Poor devils I" which are his art- 
 less and habitual expressions of self-pity. And 
 then, all at once, he begins to scream, as 
 I had not heard him scream for a long time. 
 He screams in a sort of frenzy, opening 
 his mouth widely, and shrieking with all 
 
82 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 the strength of his lungs, and with all the 
 strength of his face, it would seem, for it is 
 flushed and bathed in sweat. He screams 
 unreasonably at the lightest touch, in an in- 
 coherent and disorderly fashion. 
 
 Then, ceasing to exhort him to be calm with 
 gentle and compassionate words, I raise my 
 voice suddenly and order the boy to be quiet, 
 in a severe tone that admits of no parley- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 Marie's agitation subsides at once, like a 
 bubble at the touch of a finger. The ward 
 still rings with my imperious order. A good 
 lady who does not understand at once, stares 
 at me in stupefaction. 
 
 But Marie, red and frightened, controls his 
 unreasonable emotion. And as long as the 
 dressing lasts, I dominate his soul strenuously 
 to prevent him from suffering in vain, just 
 as others hold and grasp his wrists. 
 
 Then, presently, it is all over. I give him 
 a fraternal smile that relaxes the tension of his 
 brow as a bow is unbent. 
 
 * * * 
 
 A lady, who is a duchess at the least, came 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU S3 
 
 to visit the wounded. She exhaled such a 
 strong, sweet perfume that she cannot have 
 distinguished the odour of suffering that per- 
 vades this place. 
 
 Carre was shown to her as one of the most 
 interesting specimens of the house. She looked 
 at him with a curious, faded smile, which, 
 thanks to paint and powder, still had a cer- 
 tain beauty. 
 
 She made some patriotic remarks to Carre 
 full of allusions to his conduct under fire. 
 And Carre ceased staring out of the window 
 to look at the lady with eyes full of respectful 
 astonishment. 
 
 And then she asked Carre what she could 
 send him that he would like, with a gesture 
 that seemed to offer the kingdoms of the earth 
 and the glory of them. 
 
 Carre, in return, gave her a radiant smile; 
 he considered for a moment and then said 
 modestly: 
 
 "A little bit of veal with new potatoes." 
 
 The handsome lady thought it tactful to 
 laugh. And I felt instinctively that her in- 
 terest in Carre was suddenly quenched. 
 
34 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 An old man sometimes comes to visit 
 Carre. He stops before the bed, and with a 
 stony face pronounces words full of an over- 
 flowing benevolence. 
 
 "Give him anything he asks for. . . . Send 
 a telegram to his family." 
 
 Carre protests timidly: "Why a telegram? 
 I have no one but my poor old mother; it 
 would frighten her." 
 
 The little old gentleman emerges from his 
 varnished boots like a variegated plant from 
 a double vase. 
 
 Carre coughs — first, to keep himself in 
 countenance, and, secondly, because his cruel 
 bronchitis takes this opportunity to give him 
 a shaking. 
 
 Then the old gentleman stoops, and all his 
 medals hang out from his tunic like little 
 dried-up breasts. He bends down, puffing 
 and pouting, without removing his gold- 
 trimmed kepi, and lays a deaf ear on Carre's 
 chest with an air of authority. 
 
 Carre's leg has been sacrificed. The whole 
 limb has gone, leaving a huge and dreadful 
 wound level with the trunk. 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 35 
 
 It is very surprising that the rest of Carre 
 did not go with the leg. 
 
 He had a pretty hard day. 
 
 O life! O soul! How you cling to this 
 battered carcase! O little gleam on the 
 surface of the eye! Twenty times I saw it 
 die down and kindle again. And it seemed 
 too suffering, too weak, too despairing ever 
 to reflect anything again save suffering, weak- 
 ness, and despair. 
 
 During the long afternoon, I go and sit 
 between two beds beside Lerondeau. I offer 
 him cigarettes, and we talk. This means that 
 we say nothing, or very little. . . . But it is 
 not necessary to speak when one has a talk 
 with Lerondeau. 
 
 Marie is very fond of cigarettes, but what 
 he likes still better is that I should come and 
 sit by him for a bit. When I pass through 
 the ward, he taps coaxingly upon his sheet, 
 as one taps upon a bench to invite a friend to 
 a seat. 
 
 Since he told me about his life at home and 
 his campaign, he has not found much to say 
 
36 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 to me. He takes the cakes with which his 
 little shelf is laden, and crunches them with 
 an air of enjoyment. 
 
 "As for me," he says, "I just eat all the 
 time," and he laughs. 
 
 If he stops eating to smoke, he laughs again. 
 Then there is an agreeable silence. Marie 
 looks at me, and begins to laugh again. And 
 when I get up to go, he says: u Oh, you are 
 not in such a great hurry, we can chat a 
 little longer!" 
 
 Lerondeau's leg was such a bad business 
 that it is now permanently shorter than the 
 other by a good twelve centimetres. So at 
 least it seems to us, looking down on it from 
 above. 
 
 But Lerondeau, who has only seen it from 
 afar by raising his head a little above the 
 table while his wounds are being dressed, has 
 noticed only a very slight difference in length 
 between his two legs. 
 
 He said philosophically: 
 
 "It is shorter, but with a good thick 
 sole. . . ." 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 37 
 
 When Marie was better, he raised himself 
 on his elbow, and he understood the extent 
 of his injury more clearly. 
 
 "I shall want a very thick sole," he re- 
 marked. 
 
 Now that Lerondeau can sit up, he, too, can 
 estimate the extent of the damage from 
 above; but he is happy to feel life welling 
 up once more in him, and he concludes gaily: 
 
 "What I shall want is not a sole, but a 
 little bench." 
 
 But Carre is ill, terribly ill. 
 
 That valiant soul of his seems destined to 
 be left alone, for all else is failing. 
 
 He had one sound leg. Now it is stiff and 
 swollen. 
 
 He had healthy, vigorous arms. Now one 
 of them is covered with abscesses. 
 
 The joy of breathing no longer exists for 
 Carre, for his cough shakes him savagely in 
 his bed. 
 
 The back, by means of which we rest, has 
 also betrayed him. Here and there it is 
 ulcerated; for man was not meant to lie 
 
38 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 perpetually on his back, but only to lie and 
 sleep on it after a day of toil. 
 
 For man was not really intended to suffer 
 with his miserable, faithless body! 
 
 And his heart beats laboriously. 
 
 There was mischief in the bowel too. So 
 much so, that one day Carre was unable to 
 control himself, before a good many people 
 who had come in. 
 
 In spite of our care, in spite of our friendly 
 assurances, Carre was so ashamed that he 
 wept. He who always said that a man ought 
 not to cry, he who never shed a tear in the 
 most atrocious suffering, sobbed with shame 
 on account of this accident. And I could not 
 console him. 
 
 He no longer listens to all we say to him. 
 He no longer answers our questions. He has 
 mysterious fits of absence. 
 
 He who was so dignified in his language, 
 expresses himself and complains with the words 
 of a child. 
 
 Sometimes he comes up out of the depths 
 and speaks. 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 39 
 
 He talks of death with an imaginative 
 lucidity which sounds like actual experi- 
 ence. 
 
 Sometimes he sees it. . . . And as he gazes, 
 his pupils suddenly distend. 
 
 But he will not, he cannot make up his 
 mind. . . . 
 
 He wants to suffer a little longer. 
 
 I draw near to his bed in the gathering 
 darkness. His breathing is so light that sud- 
 denly, I stop and listen open-mouthed, full of 
 anxiety. 
 
 Then Carre suddenly opens his eyes. 
 
 Will he sigh and groan? No. He smiles 
 and says: 
 
 "What white teeth you have!" 
 
 Then he dreams, as if he were dying. 
 
 Could you have imagined such a martyrdom, 
 my brother, when you were driving- the plough 
 into your little plot of brown earth? 
 
 Here you are, enduring a death-agony of 
 five months swathed in these livid wrappings, 
 without even the rewards that are given to 
 others. 
 
40 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Your breast, your shroud must be bare of 
 even the humblest of the rewards of valour, 
 Carre. 
 
 It was written that you should suffer with- 
 out purpose and without hope. 
 
 But I will not let all your sufferings be lost 
 in the abyss. And so I record them thus at 
 length. 
 
 Lerondeau has been brought down into the 
 garden. I find him there, stretched out on a 
 cane chair, with a little kepi pulled down over 
 his eyes, to shade them from the first spring 
 sunshine. 
 
 He talks a little, smokes a good deal, and 
 laughs more. 
 
 I look at his leg, but he hardly ever looks 
 at it himself; he no longer feels it. 
 
 He will forget it even more utterly after a 
 while, and he will live as if it were natural 
 enough for a man to live with a stiff, distorted 
 limb. 
 
 Forget your leg, forget your sufferings, 
 Lerondeau. But the world must not forget 
 them. 
 
STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 41 
 
 And I leave Marie sitting in the sun, with 
 
 a fine new pink colour in his freckled cheeks. 
 
 Carre died early this morning. Lerondeau 
 leaves us to-morrow. 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 
 
 WERE modesty banished from the 
 rest of the earth, it would no 
 doubt find a refuge in Mouchon's 
 heart. 
 
 I see him still as he arrived, on a stretcher 
 full of little pebbles, with his mud be-plastered 
 coat, and his handsome, honest face, like that 
 of a well-behaved child. 
 
 "You must excuse me," he said; "we can't 
 keep ourselves very clean," 
 
 "Have you any lice?" asks the orderly, as 
 he undresses him. 
 
 Mouchon flushes and looks uneasy. 
 
 "Well, if I have, they don't really belong 
 to me." 
 
 He has none, but he has a broken leg, "due 
 to a torpedo." 
 
 The orderly cuts open his trouser, and I 
 tell him to take off the boot. Mouchon puts 
 out his hand, and says diffidently: 
 
 42 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 43 
 
 "Never mind the boot." 
 
 "But, my good fellow, we can't dress your 
 leg without taking off your boot." 
 
 Then Mouchon, red and confused, objects: 
 
 "But if you take off the boot, I'm afraid 
 my foot will smell. . . ." 
 
 I have often thought of this answer. And 
 believe me, Mouchon, I have not yet met the 
 prince who is worthy to take off your boots 
 and wash your humble feet. 
 
 II 
 
 With his forceps the doctor lays hold care- 
 fully of a mass of bloody dressings, and draws 
 them gently out of a gaping wound in the 
 abdomen. A ray of sunshine lights him at 
 his work, and the whole of the frail shed 
 trembles to the roar of the cannon. 
 
 "I am a big china-dealer," murmurs the 
 patient. "You come from Paris, and I do, 
 too. Save me, and you shall see. . . . I'll 
 give you a fine piece of china." 
 
 The plugs are coming out by degrees; 
 the forceps glitter, and the ray of sunshine 
 seems to tremble under the cannonade, as 
 
44 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 do the floor, the walls, the light roof, the 
 
 whole earth, the whole universe, drunk with 
 
 fatigue. 
 
 Suddenly, from the depths of space, a 
 whining sound arises, swells, rends the air 
 above the shed, and the shell bursts a few 
 yards off, with the sound of a cracked object 
 breaking. 
 
 The thin walls seem to quiver under the 
 pressure of the air. The doctor makes a 
 slight movement of his head, as if to see, 
 after all, where the thing fell. 
 
 Then the china-dealer, who noted the move- 
 ment, says in a quiet voice: 
 
 "Don't take any notice of those small 
 things, they don't do any harm. Only save 
 me, and I will give you a beautiful piece of 
 china or earthenware, whichever you like." 
 
 Ill 
 
 The root of the evil is not so much the 
 shattered leg, as the little wound in the arm, 
 from which so much good blood was lost. 
 
 With his livid lips, no longer distinguishable 
 from the rest of his face, and the immense 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 45 
 
 black pupils of his eyes, the man shows 
 a countenance irradiated by a steadfast soul, 
 which will not give in till the last mo- 
 ment. He contemplates the ravages of 
 his body almost severely, and without il- 
 lusion, and watching the surgeons as 
 they scrub their hands, he says in a grave 
 voice : 
 
 "Tell my wife that my last thoughts were 
 of her and our children." 
 
 Ah! it was not a veiled question, for, 
 without a moment's hesitation, he allows us 
 to put the mask over his face. 
 
 The solemn words seem still to echo through 
 the ward: 
 
 "Tell my wife . . ." 
 
 That manly face is not the face of one who 
 could be deceived by soft words and consoling 
 phrases. The white blouse turns away. The 
 surgeon's eyes grow dim behind his spectacles, 
 and in solemn tones he replies: 
 
 "We will not fail to do so, friend.'' 
 
 The patient's eyelids flutter — as one waves 
 a handkerchief from the deck of a departing 
 steamer — then, breathing in the ether steadily, 
 he falls into a dark slumber. 
 
46 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 He never wakes, and we keep our promise 
 to him. 
 
 IV 
 
 A few days before the death of Tricot, a 
 very annoying thing happened to him; a 
 small excrescence, a kind of pimpel, appeared 
 on the side of his nose. 
 
 Tricot had suffered greatly; only some 
 fragments of his hands remained; but, above 
 all, he had a great opening in his side, a kind 
 of fetid mouth, through which the will to live 
 seemed to evaporate. 
 
 Coughing, spitting, looking about with wide, 
 agonised eyes in search of elusive breath, 
 having no hands to scratch oneself with, 
 being unable to eat unaided, and further, 
 never having the smallest desire to eat — 
 could this be called living? And yet Tricot 
 never gave in. He waged his own war with 
 the divine patience of a man who had waged 
 the great world war, and who knows that 
 victory will not come right away. 
 
 But Tricot had neither allies nor reserves; 
 he was all alone, so wasted and so exhausted 
 that the day came when he passed almost 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 47 
 imperceptibly from the state of a wounded to 
 that of a dying man. 
 
 And it was just at this moment that ths 
 pimple appeared. 
 
 Tricot had borne the greatest sufferings cour- 
 ageously; but he seemed to have no strength to 
 bear this slight addition to his woes. 
 
 "Monsieur," stammered the orderly who 
 had charge of him, utterly dejected, "I tell 
 you, that pimple is the spark that makes the 
 cup overflow." 
 
 And in truth the cup overflowed. This 
 misfortune was too much. Tricot began to 
 complain, and from that moment I felt that 
 he was doomed. 
 
 I asked him several times a day, thinking of 
 all his wounds: "How are you, old fellow?" 
 And he, thinking of nothing but the pimple, 
 answered always: 
 
 "Very bad, very bad! The pimple is get- 
 ting bigger." 
 
 It was true. The pimple had come to a 
 head, and I wanted to prick it. 
 
 Tricot, who had allowed us to cut into his 
 chest without an anaesthetic, exclaimed with 
 tears : 
 
48 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 "No, no more operations! I won't have 
 any more operations." 
 
 All day long he lamented about his pimple, 
 and the following night he, died. 
 
 "It was a bad pimple," said the orderly; 
 "it was that which killed him." 
 
 Alas! It was not a very "bad pimple," 
 but no doubt it killed him. 
 
 Mehay was nearly killed, but he did not 
 die; so no great harm was done. 
 
 The bullet went through his helmet, and 
 only touched the bone. The brain is all right. 
 So much the better. 
 
 No sooner had Mehay come to, and hic- 
 coughed a little in memory of the chloroform, 
 than he began to look round with interest at 
 all that was happening about him. 
 
 Three days after the operation, Mehay got 
 up. It would have been useless to forbid this 
 proceeding. Mehay would have disobeyed 
 orders for the first time in his life. We could 
 not even think of taking away his clothes. 
 The brave man never lacks clothes. 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 4,9 
 
 Mehay accordingly got up, and his illness 
 was a thing of the past. 
 
 Every morning, Mehay rises before day- 
 break and seizes a broom. Rapidly and 
 thoroughly, he makes the ward as clean as 
 his own heart. He never forgets any corner, 
 and he manages to pass the brush gently 
 under the beds without waking his sleeping 
 comrades, and without disturbing those who 
 are in pain. Sometimes Mehay hands basins 
 or towels, and he is as gentle as a woman 
 when he helps to dress Vossaert, whose limbs 
 are numb and painful. 
 
 At eight o'clock, the ward is in perfect order, 
 and as the dressings are about to begin, Mehay 
 suddenly appears in a fine clean apron. He 
 watches my hands carefully as they come and 
 go, and he is always in the right place to 
 hand the dressing to the forceps, to pour out 
 the spirit, or to lend a hand with a bandage, 
 for he very soon learned to bandage skilfully. 
 
 He does not say a word; he just looks. The 
 bit of his forehead that shows under his own 
 bandages is wrinkled with the earnestness of 
 his attention — and he has those blue marks 
 by which we recognise the miner. 
 
50 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Sometimes it is his turn to have a dress- 
 ing. But scarcely is it completed when he is 
 up again with his apron before him, si- 
 lently busy. 
 
 At eleven o'clock, Mehay disappears. He 
 has gone, perhaps, to get a breath of fresh 
 air? Oh, no! Here he is back again with a 
 trayful of bowls. And he hands round the 
 soup. 
 
 In the evening he hands the thermometer. 
 He helps the orderlies so much that he leaves 
 them very little to do. 
 
 All this time the bones of his skull are at 
 work under his bandages, and the red flesh is 
 growing. But we are not to trouble about 
 that: it will manage all alone. The man, 
 however, cannot be idle. He works, and 
 trusts to his blood, "which is healthy." 
 
 In the evening, when the ward is lighted by 
 a night-light, and I come in on tiptoe to give 
 a last look round, I hear a voice laboriously 
 spelling: "B-O, Bo; B-I, Bi; N-E, Ne, 
 Bobine." It is Mehay, learning to read before 
 going to bed. 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 51 
 
 VI 
 
 A lamp has been left alight, because the men 
 are not asleep yet, and they are allowed to 
 smoke for a while. It would be no fun to 
 smoke, unless one could see the smoke. 
 
 The former bedroom of the mistress of the 
 house makes a very light, very clean ward. 
 Under the draperies which have been fastened 
 up to the ceiling and covered with sheets, old 
 Louarn lies motionless, waiting for his three 
 shattered limbs to mend. He is smoking a 
 cigarette, the ash from which falls upon his 
 breast. Apologising for the little heaps of 
 dirt that make his bed the despair of the 
 orderlies, he says to me: 
 
 "You know, a Breton ought to be a bit 
 dirty." 
 
 I touch the weight attached to his thigh, and 
 he exclaims : 
 
 "Ma doue! Ma doue! Caste! Caste!" 
 
 These are oaths of a kind, of his own 
 coining, which make every one laugh, and 
 himself the first. He adds, as he does every 
 day: 
 
52 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 "Doctor, you never hurt me so much before 
 as you have done this time." 
 
 Then he laughs again. 
 
 Lens is not asleep yet, but he is as silent as 
 usual. He has scarcely uttered twenty words 
 in three weeks. 
 
 In a corner, Mehay patiently repeats: 
 "P-A, Pa," and the orderly who is teaching 
 him to read presses his forefinger on the soiled 
 page. 
 
 I make my way towards Croin, Octave. I 
 sit down by the bed in silence. 
 
 Croin turns a face half hidden by bandages 
 to me, and puts a leg damp with sweat out 
 from under the blankets, for fever runs high 
 just at this time. He too, is silent; he knows 
 as well as I do that he is not going on well; 
 but all the same, he hopes I shall go away 
 without speaking to him. 
 
 No. I must tell him. I bend over him and 
 murmur certain things. 
 
 He listens, and his chin begins to tremble, 
 his boyish chin, which is covered with a soft, 
 fair down. 
 
 Then, with the accent of his province, he 
 says in a tearful, hesitating voice : 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 53 
 
 "I have already given an eye, must I give 
 a hand too?" 
 
 His one remaining eye fills with tears. And 
 seeing the sound hand, I press it gently before 
 I go. 
 
 VII 
 
 When I put my fingers near his injured eye, 
 Croin recoils a little. 
 
 "Don't be afraid," I say to him. 
 
 "Oh, I'm not afraid!" 
 
 And he adds proudly: 
 
 "When a chap has lived on Hill 108, he 
 can't ever be afraid of anything again." 
 
 "Then why do you wince?" 
 
 "It's just my head moving back of its own 
 accord. I never think of it." 
 
 And it is true; the man is not afraid, but 
 his flesh recoils. 
 
 When the bandage is properly adjusted, 
 what remains visible of Croin's face is young, 
 agreeable, charming. I note this with satis- 
 faction, and say to him: 
 
 "There's not much damage done on this 
 side. We'll patch you up so well that you 
 will still be able to make conquests." 
 
54 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 He smiles, touches his bandage, looks at his 
 mutilated arm, seems to lose himself for a 
 while in memories, and murmurs: 
 
 "May be. But the girls will never come 
 after me again as they used to. . . ." 
 
 VIII 
 
 "The skin is beginning to form over the 
 new flesh. A few weeks more, and then a 
 wooden leg. You will run along like a rabbit." 
 
 Plaquet essays a little dry laugh which 
 means neither yes nor no, but which reveals a 
 great timidity, and something else, a great 
 anxiety. 
 
 "For Sundays, you can have an artificial 
 leg. You put a boot on it. The trouser hides 
 it all. It won't show a bit." 
 
 The wounded man shakes his head slightly, 
 and listens with a gentle, incredulous smile. 
 
 "With an artificial leg, Plaquet, you will, 
 of course, be able to go out. It will be almost 
 as it was before." 
 
 Plaquet shakes his head again, and says in a 
 low voice: 
 
 "Oh, I shall never go out!" 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 55 
 
 "But with a good artificial leg, Plaquet, you 
 will be able to walk almost as well as before. 
 Why shouldn't you go out?" 
 
 Plaquet hesitates and remains silent. 
 "Why?" 
 
 Then in an almost inaudible voice he re- 
 plies: 
 
 "I will never go out. I should be ashamed." 
 
 Plaquet will wear a medal on his breast. He 
 
 is a brave soldier, and by no means a fool. 
 
 But there are very complex feelings which we 
 
 must not judge too hastily. 
 
 IX 
 
 In the corner of the ward there is a little 
 plank bed which is like all the other little 
 beds. But buried between its sheets there is 
 the smile of Mathouillet, which is like no 
 other smile. 
 
 Mathouillet, after throwing a good many 
 bombs, at last got one himself. In this 
 disastrous adventure, he lost part of his 
 thigh, received several wounds, and gradually 
 became deaf. Such is the fate of bombardier- 
 grenadier Mathouillet. 
 
56 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 The bombardier-grenadier has a gentle, 
 beardless face, which for many weeks must 
 have expressed great suffering, and which is 
 now beginning to show a little satisfaction. 
 
 But Mathouillet hears so badly that when 
 one speaks to him he only smiles in answer. 
 
 If I come into the ward, Mathouillet' s 
 smile awaits and welcomes me. When the 
 dressing is over, Mathouillet thanks me with 
 a smile. If I look at the temperature chart, 
 Mathouillet's smile follows me, but not ques- 
 tioningly; Mathouillet has faith in me, but 
 his smile says a number of unspoken things 
 that I understand perfectly. Conversation is 
 difficult, on account of this unfortunate deaf- 
 ness — that is to say, conversation as usually 
 carried on. But we two, happily, have no 
 need of words. For some time past, certain 
 smiles have been enough for us. And Mathouil- 
 let smiles, not only with his eyes or with his 
 lips, but with his nose, his beardless chin, his 
 broad, smooth forehead, crowned by the pale 
 hair of the North, with all his gentle, boyish 
 face. 
 
 Now that Mathouillet can get up, he eats 
 at the table, with his comrades. To call him 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 5% 
 
 to meals, Baraffe utters a piercing cry, which 
 reaches the ear of the bombardier-grena- 
 dier. 
 
 He arrives, shuffling his slippers along the 
 floor, and examines all the laughing faces. As 
 he cannot hear, he hesitates to sit down, and 
 this time his smile betrays embarrassment and 
 confusion. 
 
 Coming very close to him, I say loudly: 
 
 "Your comrades are calling you to dinner, 
 my boy." 
 
 "Yes, yes," he replies, "but because they 
 know I am deaf, they sometimes try to play 
 tricks on me." 
 
 His cheeks flush warmly as he makes this 
 impromptu confidence. Then he makes up his 
 mind to sit down, after interrogating me with 
 his most affectionate smile. 
 
 X 
 
 Once upon a time, Paga would have been 
 called un type; now he is un numero. This 
 means that he is an original, that his ways of 
 considering and practising life are unusual; 
 and as life here is reduced entirely to terms of 
 
58 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 suffering, it means that his manner of suffering 
 differs from that of other people. 
 
 From the very beginning, during those hard 
 moments when the wounded man lies plunged 
 in stupor and self-forgetfulness, Paga distin- 
 guished himself by some remarkable eccen- 
 tricities. 
 
 Left leg broken, right foot injured, such was 
 the report on Paga's hospital sheet. 
 
 Now the leg was not doing at all well. 
 Every morning, the good head doctor stared 
 at the swollen flesh with his little round dis- 
 coloured eyes and said: "Come, we must just 
 wait till to-morrow." 
 
 But Paga did not want to wait 
 
 Flushed with fever, his hands trembling, his 
 southern accent exaggerated by approaching 
 delirium, he said, as soon as we came to see 
 him. 
 
 "My wish, my wish! You know my wish, 
 doctor." 
 
 Then, lower, with a kind of passion : 
 
 "I want you to cut it off, you know. I 
 want you to cut this leg. Oh! I shan't be 
 happy till it is done. Doctor, cut it, cut it 
 off." 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 59 
 
 We didn't cut it at all, and Paga's business 
 was very successfully arranged. I even feel 
 sure that this leg became quite a respectable 
 limb again. 
 
 I am bound to say Paga understood that he 
 had meddled with things which did not con- 
 cern him. He nevertheless continued to offer 
 imperative advice as to the manner in which 
 he wished to be nursed. 
 
 "Don't pull off the dressings! I won't 
 have it. Do you hear, doctor? Don't pull. 
 I won't have it." 
 
 Then he would begin to tremble nervously 
 all over his body and to say: 
 
 U J am quite calm! Oh, I am really calm. 
 See, Michelet, see, Brugneau, I am calm. Doc- 
 tor, see, I am quite calm." 
 
 Meantime the dressings were gradually 
 loosening under a trickle of water, and Paga 
 muttered between his teeth: 
 
 "He's pulling, he's pulling. . . . Oh, the 
 cruel man! I won't have it, I won't have it." 
 
 Then suddenly, with flaming cheeks: 
 
 "That's right. That's right! See, Michelet, 
 see, Brugneau: the dressings have come away. 
 Sergeant, Sergeant, the dressings are loosened." 
 
60 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 He clapped his hands, possessed by a fur- 
 tive joy; then he suddenly became conscious, 
 and with a deep furrow between his brows, he 
 began to give orders again. 
 
 "Not any tincture of iodine to-day, doctor. 
 Take away those forceps, doctor, take them 
 away." 
 
 Meanwhile the implacable forceps did their 
 work, the tincture of iodine performed its 
 chilly function; then Paga yelled: 
 
 "Quickly, quickly. Kiss me, kiss me." 
 
 With his arms thrown out like tentacles, he 
 beat upon the air, and seized haphazard upon 
 the first blouse that passed. Then he would 
 embrace it frantically. 
 
 Thus it happened that he once showered 
 kisses on Michelet's hands, objects by no 
 means suitable for such a demonstration. 
 Michelet said, laughing: 
 
 "Come, stop it; my hands are dirty." 
 
 And then poor Paga began to kiss Michelet's 
 bare, hairy arms, saying distractedly: 
 
 "If your hands are dirty, your arms are all 
 right." 
 
 Alas, what has become of all those who, 
 during days and nights of patient labour, I 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 61 
 
 saw gradually shaking off the dark empire of 
 the night and coming back again to joy? What 
 has become of the smouldering faggot which 
 an ardent breath finally kindled into flame? 
 
 What became of you, precious lives, poor 
 wonderful souls, for whom I fought so many 
 obscure great battles, and who went off again 
 into the realm of adventure? 
 
 You, Paga, little fellow, where are you? Do 
 you remember the time when I used to dress 
 your two wounds alternately, and when you 
 said to me with great severity: 
 
 "The leg to-day, only the leg. It's not the 
 day for the foot." 
 
 XI 
 
 Sergeant Lecolle is distinguished by a huge 
 black beard, which fails to give a ferocious 
 expression to the gentlest face in the world. 
 
 He arrived the day little Delporte died, and 
 scarcely had he emerged from the dark sleep 
 when, opening his eyes, he saw Delporte die. 
 
 I went to speak to him several times. He 
 looked so exhausted, his black beard was so 
 mournful that I kept on telling him: "Ser- 
 geant, your wound is not serious." 
 
62 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Each time he shook his head as if to say 
 that he took but little interest in the matter, 
 and tried to close his eyes. 
 
 Lecolle is too nervous; he was not able to 
 close his eyes, and he saw Delporte dead, and 
 he had been obliged to witness all Delporte's 
 death agony; for when one has a wound in 
 the right shoulder, one can only lie upon the 
 left shoulder. 
 
 The ward was full, I could not change the 
 sergeant's place, and yet I should have liked 
 to let him be alone all day with his own pain. 
 
 Now Lecolle is better; he feels better 
 without much exuberance, with a seriousness 
 which knows and foresees the bufferings of 
 Fate. 
 
 Lecolle was a stenographer "in life." We 
 are no longer "in life," but the good stenog- 
 rapher retains his principles. When his wounds 
 are dressed, he looks carefully at the little 
 watch on his wrist. 
 
 He moans at intervals, and stops suddenly 
 to say: 
 
 "It has taken fifty seconds to-day to loosen 
 the dressings. Yesterday, you took sixty-two 
 seconds." 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 63 
 
 His first words after the operation were : 
 "Will you please tell me how many minutes 
 I was unconscious?" 
 
 XII 
 
 I first saw Derancourt in the room adjoining 
 the chapel. A band of crippled men, returning 
 from Germany after a long captivity, had just 
 been brought in there. 
 
 There were some fifty of them, all looking 
 with delighted eyes at the walls, the benches, 
 the telephone, all the modest objects in this 
 waiting-room, objects which are so much more 
 attractive under the light of France than in 
 harsh exile. 
 
 The waiting-room seemed to have been 
 transformed into a museum of misery: there 
 were blind men, legless and armless men, 
 paralysed men, their faces ravaged by fire and 
 powder. 
 
 A big fellow said, lifting his deformed arm 
 with an effort* 
 
 "I tricked them; they thought to the end 
 that I was really paralysed. I look well, but 
 that's because they sent us to Constance for 
 the last week, to fatten us up." 
 
64 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 A dark, thin man was walking to and fro, 
 towing his useless foot after him by the help 
 of a string which ran down his trouser leg; 
 and he laughed: 
 
 "I walk more with my fist than with my 
 foot. Gentlemen, gentlemen, who would like 
 to pull Punch's string?" 
 
 All wore strange costumes, made up of mil- 
 itary clothing and patched civilian garments. 
 
 On a bench sat fifteen or twenty men with 
 about a dozen legs between them. It was 
 among these that I saw Derancourt. He 
 was holding his crutches in one hand and 
 looking round him, stroking his long fair 
 moustache absently. 
 
 Derancourt became my friend. 
 
 His leg had been cut off at the thigh, and 
 this had not yet healed; he had, further, a 
 number of other wounds which had closed 
 more or less during his captivity. 
 
 Derancourt never talked of himself, much 
 less of his misfortune. I knew from his com- 
 rades that he had fought near Longwy, his 
 native town, and that he had lain grievously 
 wounded for nine days on the battlefield. He 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 65 
 
 had seen his father, who had come to succour 
 him, killed at his side; then he had lain 
 beside the corpse, tortured by a delirious 
 dream in which nine days and nine nights 
 had followed one upon the other, like a dizzi- 
 ness of alternate darkness and dazzling light. 
 In the mornings, he sucked the wet grass 
 he clutched when he stretched out his 
 hands. 
 
 Afterwards he had suffered in Germany, 
 and finally he had come back to France, 
 mutilated, covered with wounds, and knowing 
 that his wife and children were left without 
 help and without resources in the invaded 
 territory. 
 
 Of all this Derancourt said not a word. He 
 apparently did not know how to complain, and 
 he contemplated the surrounding wretched- 
 ness with a grave look, full of experience, 
 which would have seemed a little cold but 
 for the tremulous mobility of his features. 
 
 Derancourt never played, never laughed. 
 He sought solitude, and spent hours, turning 
 his head slowly from side to side, contemplat- 
 ing the walls and the ceiling like one who 
 sees things within himself. 
 
66 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 The day came when we had to operate on 
 Derancourt, to make his stump of a thigh 
 serviceable. 
 
 He was laid on the table. He remained 
 calm and self-controlled as always, looking at 
 the preparations for the operation with a kind 
 of indifference. 
 
 We put the chloroform pad under his nose ; 
 he drew two or three deep breaths, and then 
 a strange thing happened: Derancourt began 
 to sob in a terrible manner, and to talk of 
 all those things he had never mentioned. 
 The grief he had suppressed for months over- 
 flowed, or rather, rushed out in desperate, 
 heartrending lamentations. 
 
 It was not the disorderly intoxication, the 
 muscular, animal rebellion of those who are 
 thrown into this artificial sleep. It was the 
 sudden break-up of an overstrained will under 
 a slight shock. For months Derancourt had 
 braced himself against despair, and now, all 
 of a sudden, he gave way, and abandoned 
 himself to poignant words and tears. The 
 flood withdrew suddenly, leaving the horrible, 
 chaotic depths beneath the sea visible. 
 
 We ceased scrubbing our hands, and stood 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 67 
 
 aghast and deeply moved, full of sadness and 
 respect. 
 
 Then some one exclaimed: 
 
 "Quick! quick! More chloroform ! Stupefy 
 him outright, let him sleep." 
 
 XIII 
 
 "But a man can't be paralysed by a little 
 hole in his back! I tell you it was only a 
 bullet. You must take it out, doctor. Take 
 it out, and I shall be all right." 
 
 Thus said a Zouave, who had been lying 
 helpless for three days on his bed. 
 
 "If you knew how strong I am! Look at 
 my arms! No one could unhook a bag like 
 me, and heave it over my shoulder — tock! 
 A hundred kilos — with one jerk!" 
 
 The doctor looked at the muscular torso, 
 and his face expressed pity, regret, embarrass- 
 ment, and, perhaps, a certain wish to go 
 away. 
 
 "But this wretched bullet prevents me from 
 moving my legs. You must take it out, doc- 
 tor, you must take it out!" 
 
 The doctor glances at the paralysed legs, 
 
68 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 and the swollen belly, already lifeless. He 
 knows that the bullet broke the spine, 
 and cut through the marrow which sent 
 law and order into all this now inanimate 
 flesh. 
 
 "Operate, doctor. Look you, a healthy chap 
 like me would soon get well." 
 
 The doctor stammers vague sentences: the 
 operation would be too serious for the present 
 . . . better wait. . . . 
 
 "No, no. Never fear. My health is first- 
 rate. Don't be afraid, the operation is bound 
 to be a success." 
 
 His rugged face is contracted by his fixed 
 idea. His voice softens; blind confidence and 
 supplication give it an unusual tone. His 
 heavy eyebrows meet and mingle under the 
 stress of his indomitable will; his soul makes 
 such an effort that the immobility of his legs 
 seems suddenly intolerable. Heavens! Can 
 a man will so intensely, and yet be powerless 
 to control his own body? 
 
 "Oh, operate, operate! You will see how 
 pleased I shall be!" 
 
 The doctor twists the sheet round his fore- 
 finger; then, hearing a wounded man groan- 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 69 
 
 ing in the next ward, he gets up, says he will 
 come back presently, and escapes. 
 
 XIV 
 
 The colloquy between the rival gods took 
 place at the foot of the great staircase. 
 
 The Arab soldier had just died. It was the 
 Arab one used to see under a shed, seated 
 gravely on the ground in the midst of other 
 magnificent Arabs. In those days they had 
 boots of crimson leather, and majestic red 
 mantles. They used to sit in a circle, contem- 
 plating from under their turbans the vast 
 expanse of mud watered by the skies of 
 Artois. To-day, they wear the ochre helmet, 
 and show the profiles of Saracen warriors. 
 
 The Algerian has just been killed, kicked 
 in the belly by his beautiful white horse. 
 
 In the ambulance there was a Mussulman 
 orderly, a well-to-do tradesman, who had vol- 
 unteered for the work. He, on the other 
 hand, was extremely European, nay, Parisian; 
 but a plump, malicious smile showed itself in 
 the midst of his crisp grey beard, and he had 
 the look in the eyes peculiar to those who 
 
70 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 come from the other side of the Mediter- 
 ranean. 
 
 Rashid "behaved very well." He had 
 found native words when tending the dying 
 man, and had lavished on him the consolations 
 necessary to those of his country. 
 
 When the Algerian was dead, he arranged 
 the winding-sheet himself, in his own fashion; 
 then he lighted a cigarette, and set out in 
 search of Monet and Renaud. 
 
 For lack of space, we had no mortuary at 
 the time in the ambulance. Corpses were 
 placed in the chapel of the cemetery while 
 awaiting burial. The military burial-ground 
 had been established within the precincts of 
 the church, close by the civilian cemetery, and 
 in a few weeks it had invaded it like a cancer 
 and threatened to devour it. 
 
 Rashid had thought of everything, and this 
 was why he went in search of Monet and 
 Renaud, Catholic priests and ambulance order- 
 lies of the second class. 
 
 The meeting took place at the foot of the 
 great staircase. Leaning over the balustrade, 
 I listened, and watched the colloquy of the 
 rival gods. 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 71 
 
 Monet was thirty years old; he had fine, 
 sombre eyes, and a stiff beard, from which 
 a pipe emerged. Renaud carried the thin 
 face of a seminarist a little on one side. 
 
 Monet and Renaud listened gravely, as be- 
 came people who were deciding in the Name 
 of the Father. Rashid was pleading for his 
 dead Arab with supple eloquence, wrapped in 
 a cloud of tobacco-smoke: 
 
 "We cannot leave the Arab's corpse under 
 a wagon, in the storm. . . . This man died 
 for France, at his post. . . . He had a right 
 to all honours, and it was hard enough as it 
 was that he could not have the obsequies he 
 would surely have had in his own country." 
 
 Monet nodded approvingly, and Renaud, his 
 mouth half open, was seeking some formula. 
 
 It came, and this was it: 
 
 "Very well, Monsieur Rashid, take him into 
 the church; that is God's house for every one." 
 
 Rashid bowed with perfect deference, and 
 went back to his dead. 
 
 Oh, he arranged everything very well! He 
 had made this funeral a personal matter. He 
 was the family, the master of the ceremonies, 
 almost the priest. 
 
72 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 The Algerian's body accordingly lay in the 
 chapel, covered with the old faded flag and 
 a handful of chrysanthemums. 
 
 It was here the bearers came to take it, 
 and carry it to consecrated ground, to lie 
 among the other comrades. 
 
 Monet and Renaud were with us when it 
 was lowered into the grave. Rashid repre- 
 sented the dead man's kindred with much 
 dignity. He held something in his hand 
 which he planted in the ground before going 
 away. It was that crescent of plain deal at 
 the end of a stick which is still to be seen in 
 the midst of the worm-eaten crosses, in the 
 shadow of the belfry of L . 
 
 There the same decay works towards the 
 intermingling and the reconciliation of ancient 
 symbols and ancient dogmas. 
 
 XV 
 
 Nogue is courageous, but Norman; this 
 gives to courage a special form, which excludes 
 neither reserve, nor prudence, nor moderation 
 of language. 
 
 On the day when he was wounded, he bore 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 73 
 
 a preliminary operation with perfect calm. 
 Lifting up his shattered arm, I said: 
 
 "Are you suffering very much?" And he 
 barely opened his lips to reply: 
 
 "Well . . . perhaps a bit." 
 
 Fever came the following days, and with it 
 a certain discomfort. Nogue could not eat, 
 and when asked if he did not feel rather 
 hungry, he shook his head: 
 
 "I don't think so." 
 
 Well, the arm was broken very high up, 
 the wound looked unhealthy, the fever ran 
 high, and we made up our minds that it was 
 necessary to come to a decision. 
 
 "My poor Nogue," I said, "we really can't 
 do anything with that arm of yours. Be 
 sensible. Let us take it off." 
 
 If we had waited for his answer, Nogue 
 would have been dead by now. His face 
 expressed great dissatisfaction, but he said 
 neither yes nor no. 
 
 "Don't be afraid, Nogue. I will guarantee 
 the success of the operation." 
 
 Then he asked to make his will. When 
 the will had been made, Nogue was laid 
 upon the table and operated upon, with- 
 
74 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 out having formulated either consent or re- 
 fusal. 
 
 When the first dressing was made, Nogue 
 looked at his bleeding shoulder, and said: 
 
 "I suppose you couldn't have managed to 
 leave just a little bit of arm?" 
 
 After a few days the patient was able to 
 sit up in an arm-chair. His whole being bore 
 witness to a positive resurrection, but his 
 tongue remained cautious. 
 
 "Well, now, you see, you're getting on 
 capitally." 
 
 "Hum . . . might be better." 
 
 Never could he make up his mind to give 
 his whole-hearted approval, even after the 
 event, to the decision which had saved his 
 life. When we said to him: 
 
 "You're all right. We've done the business 
 for you!" he would not commit himself. 
 
 "We shall see, we shall see." 
 
 He got quite well, and we sent him into 
 the interior. Since then, he has written to 
 us, "business letters," prudent letters which 
 he signs "a poor mutilated fellow." 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 75 
 
 XVI 
 
 Lapointe and Ropiteau always meet in the 
 dressing ward. Ropiteau is brought in on a 
 stretcher, and Lapointe arrives on foot, jaunt- 
 ily, holding up his elbow, which is going on 
 "as well as possible." 
 
 Lying on the table, the dressings removed 
 from his thigh, Ropiteau waits to be tended, 
 looking at a winter fly walking slowly along 
 the ceiling, like an old man bowed down with 
 sorrow. 
 
 As soon as Ropiteau's wounds are laid bare, 
 Lapointe, who is versed in these matters, opens 
 the conversation. 
 
 "What do they put on it?" 
 
 "Well, only yellow spirit." 
 
 "That's the strongest of all. It stings, but 
 it is first-rate for strengthening the flesh. I 
 always get ether." 
 
 "Ether stinks so!" 
 
 "Yes, it stinks, but one gets used to it. 
 It warms the blood. Don't you have tubes 
 any longer?" 
 
 "They took out the last on Tuesday." 
 
76 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 "Mine have been taken away, too. Wait 
 a minute, old chap, let me look at it. Does 
 it itch?" 
 
 "Yes, it feels like rats gnawing at me." 
 
 "If it feels like rats, it's all right. Mine 
 feels like rats, too. Don't you want to 
 scratch?" 
 
 "Yes, but they say I mustn't." 
 
 "No, of course, you mustn't. . . . But you 
 can always tap on the dressing a little with 
 your finger. That is a relief." 
 
 Lapointe leans over and examines Ropi- 
 teau's large wound. 
 
 "Old chap, it's getting on jolly well. Same 
 here; I'll show you presently. It's red, the 
 skin is beginning to grow again. But it is 
 thin, very thin." 
 
 Lapointe sits down to have his dressing 
 cut away, then he makes a half turn towards 
 Ropiteau. 
 
 "You see — getting on famously." 
 
 Ropiteau admires unreservedly. 
 
 "Yes, you're right. It looks first-rate." 
 
 "And you know . . . such a beastly mess 
 came out of it." 
 
 At this moment, the busy forceps cover up 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 77 
 
 the wounds with the dressing, and the opera- 
 tion comes to an end. 
 
 "So long!" says Lapointe to his elbow, cast- 
 ing a farewell glance at it. And he adds, as 
 he gets to the door : 
 
 "Now there are only the damned fingers 
 that won't get on. But I don't care. I've 
 made up my mind to be a postman." 
 
 XVII 
 
 Bouchenton was not very communicative. 
 We knew nothing of his past history. As to 
 his future plans, he revealed them by one day 
 presenting to the head doctor for his signature 
 a paper asking leave to open a Moorish cafe 
 at Medea after his recovery, a request the 
 head doctor felt himself unable to endorse. 
 
 Bouchenton had undergone a long martyr- 
 dom in order to preserve an arm from which 
 the bone had been partially removed, but 
 from which a certain amount of work might 
 still be expected. He screamed like the 
 others, and his cry was "Mohabdi! Mo- 
 habdi!" When the forceps came near, he 
 cried: "Don't put them in!" And after 
 
78 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 this he maintained a silence made up of 
 dignity and indolence. During the day he 
 was to be seen wandering about the wards, 
 holding up his ghostly muffled arm with his 
 sound hand. In the evening, he learned to 
 play draughts, because it is a serious, silent 
 game, and requires consideration. 
 
 Now one day when Bouchenton, seated on 
 a chair, was waiting for his wound to be 
 dressed, the poor adjutant Figuet began to 
 complain in a voice that was no more than 
 the shadow of a voice, just as his body was 
 no more than the shadow of a body. 
 
 Figuet was crawling at the time up the 
 slopes of a Calvary where he was soon to fall 
 once more, never to rise again. 
 
 The most stupendous courage and endurance 
 foundered then in a despair for which there 
 seemed henceforth to be no possible allevia- 
 tion. 
 
 Figuet, I say, began to complain, and every 
 one in the ward feigned to be engrossed in 
 his occupation, and to hear nothing, because 
 when such a man began to groan, the rest 
 felt that the end of all things had come. 
 
 Bouchenton turned his head, looked at the 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 79 
 
 adjutant, seized his flabby arm carefully with 
 his right hand, and set out. Walking with 
 little short steps he came to the table where 
 the suffering man lay. 
 
 Stretching out his neck, his great bowed 
 body straining in an effort of attention, he 
 looked at the wounds, the pus, the soiled 
 bandages, the worn, thin face, and his own 
 wooden visage laboured under the stress of 
 all kinds of feelings. 
 
 Then Bouchenton did a very simple thing; 
 he relaxed his hold on his own boneless arm, 
 held out his right hand to Figuet, seized his 
 transparent fingers and held them tightly 
 clasped. 
 
 The adjutant ceased groaning. As long as 
 the silent pressure lasted, he ceased to com- 
 plain, ceased perhaps to suffer. Bouchenton 
 kept his right hand there as long as it was 
 necessary. 
 
 I saw this, Bouchenton, my brother. I 
 will not forget it. And I saw, too, your 
 aching, useless left arm, which you had 
 been obliged to abandon in order to have a 
 hand to give, hanging by your side like a 
 limp rag. 
 
80 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 XVIII 
 
 To be over forty years old, to be a trades- 
 man of repute, well known throughout one's 
 quarter, to be at the head of a prosperous 
 provision-dealer's business, and to get two 
 fragments of shell — in the back and the left 
 buttock respectively — is really a great mis- 
 fortune; yet this is what happened to [M. 
 Levy, infantryman and Territorial. 
 
 I never spoke familiarly to M. Levy, because 
 of his age and his air of respectability; and 
 perhaps, too, because, in his case, I felt a great 
 and special need to preserve my authority. 
 
 Monsieur Levy was not always "a good 
 patient." When I first approached him, he 
 implored me not to touch him "at any price." 
 
 I disregarded these injunctions, and did 
 what was necessary. Throughout the process, 
 Monsieur Levy was snoring, be it said. But 
 he woke up at last, uttered one or two piercing 
 cries, and stigmatised me as a "brute." All 
 right. 
 
 Then I showed him the big pieces of cast- 
 iron I had removed from his back and his 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 81 
 
 buttock respectively. Monsieur Levy's eyes 
 at once filled with tears; he murmured a few 
 feeling words about his family, and then 
 pressed my hands warmly: "Thank you, 
 thank you, dear Doctor." 
 
 Since then, Monsieur Levy has suffered a 
 good deal, I must admit. There are the 
 plugs! And those abominable india-rubber 
 tubes we push into the wounds! Monsieur 
 Levy, kneeling and prostrating himself, his 
 head in his bolster, suffered every day and 
 for several days without stoicism or resig- 
 nation. I was called an "assassin" and 
 also on several occasions, a "brute." All 
 right. 
 
 However, as I was determined that Mon- 
 sieur Levy should get well, I renewed the plugs, 
 and looked sharply after the famous india- 
 rubber tubes. 
 
 The time came when my hands were warmly 
 pressed and my patient said: "Thank you, 
 thank you, dear Doctor," every day. 
 
 At last Monsieur Levy ceased to suffer, and 
 confined himself to the peevish murmurs of 
 a spoilt beauty or a child that has been 
 scolded. But now no one takes him seriously. 
 
82 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 He has become the delight of the ward; he 
 laughs so heartily when the dressing is over, 
 he is naturally so gay and playful, that I am 
 rather at a loss as to the proper expression 
 to assume when, alluding to the past, he says, 
 with a look in which good nature, pride, sim- 
 plicity, and a large proportion of playful 
 malice are mingled: 
 
 "I suffered so much! so much!" 
 
 XIX 
 
 He was no grave, handsome Arab, looking 
 as if he had stepped from the pages of the 
 "Arabian Nights," but a kind of little brown 
 monster with an overhanging forehead and 
 ugly, scanty hair. 
 
 He lay upon the table, screaming, because 
 his abdomen was very painful and his hip was 
 all tumefied. What could we say to him? 
 He could understand nothing; he was strange, 
 terrified, pitiable. . . . 
 
 At my wits' ends, I took out a cigarette and 
 placed it between his lips. His whole face 
 changed. He took hold of the cigarette deli- 
 cately between two bony fingers; he had a 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 83 
 
 way of holding it which was a marvel of 
 aristocratic elegance. 
 
 While we finished the dressing, the poor 
 fellow smoked slowly and gravely, with all 
 the distinction of an Oriental prince; then, 
 with a negligent gesture, he threw away 
 the cigarette, of which he had only smoked 
 half. 
 
 Presently, suddenly becoming an animal, he 
 spit upon my apron, and kissed my hand like 
 a dog, repeating something which sounded like 
 "Bouia! Bouia!" 
 
 XX 
 
 Gautreau looked like a beast of burden. He 
 was heavy, square, solid of base and majestic 
 of neck and throat. What he could carry on 
 his back would have crushed an ordinary man; 
 he had big bones, so hard that the fragment of 
 shell which struck him on the skull only cracked 
 it, and got no further into it. Gautreau arrived 
 at the hospital alone, on foot; he sat down on 
 a chair in the corner, saying: 
 
 "No need to hurry; it's only a scratch." 
 
84 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYES 
 
 We gave him a cup of tea with rum in it, 
 and he began to hum: 
 
 En c our ant par les ep eigne s 
 
 Je m y etios fait un ecourchon, 
 
 Et en courant par les epeignes 
 
 Et en courant apres no? couchon. 
 
 "Ah!" said Monsieur Boissin, "you are a 
 man! Come here, let me see." 
 
 Gautreau went into the operating ward 
 saying : 
 
 "It feels queer to be walking on dry ground 
 when you've just come off the slime. You 
 see: it's only a scratch. But one never 
 knows: there may be some bits left in it." 
 
 Dr. Boussin probed the wound, and felt 
 the cracked bone. He was an old surgeon 
 who had his own ideas about courage and 
 pain. He made up his mind. 
 
 "I am in a hurry; you are a man. There 
 is just a little something to be done to you. 
 Kneel down there and don't stir." 
 
 A few minutes later, Gautreau was on his 
 knees, holding on to the leg of the table. His 
 head was covered with blood-stained ban- 
 dages, and Dr. Boussin, chisel in hand, was 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 85 
 
 tapping on his skull with the help of a little 
 mallet, like a sculptor. Gautreau exclaimed: 
 
 ''Monsieur Bassin, Monsieur Bassin, you're 
 hurting me." 
 
 "Not Bassin, but Boussin," replied the old 
 man calmly. 
 
 "Well, Boussin, if you like." 
 
 There was a silence, and then Gautreau 
 suddenly added: 
 
 "Monsieur Bassin, you are killing me with 
 these antics." 
 
 "No fear!" 
 
 "Monsieur Bassin, I tell you you're killing 
 
 me." 
 
 "Just a second more." 
 
 "Monsieur Bassin, you're driving nails into 
 my head, it's a shame." 
 
 "I've almost finished." 
 
 "Monsieur Bassin, I can't stand any more." 
 
 "It's all over now," said the surgeon, laying 
 down his instruments. 
 
 Gautreau's head was swathed with cotton 
 wool and he left the ward. 
 
 "The old chap means well," he said, laugh- 
 ing, "but fancy knocking like that . . . 
 with a hammer! It's not that it hurts so 
 
86 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 much; the pain was no great matter. But it 
 kills one, that sort of thing, and I'm not go- 
 ing to stand that." 
 
 XXI 
 
 There is only one man in the world who can 
 hold Hourticq's leg, and that is Monet. 
 
 Hourticq, who is a Southerner, cries de- 
 spairingly: "Oh, cette jammbe, cette 
 jammbe! ,, And his anxious eyes look eagerly 
 round for some one : not his doctor, but his 
 orderly, Monet. Whatever happens, the doc- 
 tor will always do those things which doctors 
 do. Monet is the only person who can take 
 the heel and then the foot in both hands, 
 raise the leg gently, and hold it in the air as 
 long as it is necessary. 
 
 There are people, it seems, who think this 
 notion ridiculous. They are all jealous per- 
 sons who envy Monet's position and would 
 like to show that they too know how to hold 
 Hourticq's leg properly. But it is not my 
 business to show favour to the ambitious. As 
 soon as Hourticq is brought in, I call Monet. 
 If Monet is engaged, well, I wait. He comes, 
 lays hold of the leg, and Hourticq ceases to 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 87 
 
 lament. It is sometimes a long business, 
 very long; big drops of sweat come out on 
 Monet's forehead. But I know that he 
 would not give up his place for anything in 
 the world. 
 
 When Mazy arrived at the hospital, Hour- 
 ticq, who is no egoist, said to him at once in 
 a low tone : 
 
 "Yours is a leg too, isn't it? You must 
 try to get Monet to hold it for you." 
 
 XXII 
 
 If Bouchard were not so bored, he would 
 not be very wretched, for he is very courage- 
 ous, and he has a good temper. But he is 
 terribly bored, in his gentle, uncomplaining 
 fashion. He is too ill to talk or play games. 
 He cannot sleep; he can only contemplate the 
 wall, and his own thoughts which creep slowly 
 along it, like caterpillars. 
 
 In the morning, I bring a catheter with me, 
 and when Bouchard's wounds are dressed, I 
 apply it, for unfortunately, he can no longer 
 perform certain functions independently. 
 
 Bouchard has crossed his hands behind the 
 
88 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 nape of his neck, and watches the process with 
 
 a certain interest. I ask: 
 
 "Did I hurt you? Is it very unpleasant?" 
 Bouchard gives a melancholy smile and 
 
 shakes his head: 
 
 "Oh, no, not at all! In fact it rather 
 
 amuses me. It makes a few minutes pass. 
 
 The day is so long. . . ." 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Thoughts of Prosper Ruffin 
 
 . . . God! How awful it is in this car- 
 riage! Who is it who is groaning like that? 
 It's maddening! And then, all this would 
 never have happened if they had only brought 
 the coffee at the right time. Well now, a 
 wretched 77 . . . oh, no! Who is it who 
 is groaning like that? God, another jolt! 
 No, no, man, we are not salad. Take care 
 there. My kidneys are all smashed. 
 
 Ah! now something is dripping on my 
 nose. Hi! You up there, what's happening? 
 He doesn't answer. I suppose it's blood, all 
 this mess. 
 
 .Now again, some one is beginning to squeal 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 89 
 
 like a pig. By the way, can it be me ? What ! 
 it was I who was groaning! Upon my word, 
 it's a little too strong, that! It was I myself 
 who was making all the row, and I did not 
 know it. It's odd to hear oneself screaming. 
 
 Ah! now it's stopping, their beastly motor. 
 
 Look, there's the sun! What's that tree 
 over there? I know, it's a Japanese pine. 
 Well, you see, I'm a gardener, old chap. 
 Oh, oh, oh! My back! What will Felicie 
 say to me? 
 
 Look, there's Felicie coming down to the 
 washing trough. She pretends not to see 
 me. ... I will steal behind the elder hedge. 
 Felicie! Felicie! I have a piece of a 77 
 in my kidneys. I like her best in her blue 
 bodice. 
 
 What are you putting over my nose, you 
 people? It stinks horribly. I am choking, I 
 tell you. Felicie, Felicie. Put on your blue 
 bodice with the white spots, my little Fell . . . 
 Oh, but . . . oh, but ... ! 
 
 Oh, the Whitsuntide bells already! God — 
 the bells already ... the Whitsun bells . . . 
 the bells. . . . 
 
90 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 XXIV 
 
 I remember him very well, although he 
 was not long with us. Indeed I think that I 
 shall never forget him, and yet he stayed such 
 a short time. . . . 
 
 When he arrived, we told him that an 
 operation was necessary, and he made a move- 
 ment with his head, as if to say that it was 
 our business, not his. 
 
 We operated, and as soon as he recovered 
 consciousness, he went off again into a dream 
 which was like a glorious delirium, silent and 
 haughty. 
 
 His breathing was so impeded by blood 
 that it sounded like groaning; but his eyes 
 were full of a strange serenity. That look 
 was never with us. 
 
 I had to uncover and dress his wounds 
 several times; and those wounds must have 
 suffered. But to the last, he himself seemed 
 aloof from everything, even his own suffer- 
 ings. 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 91 
 
 XXV 
 
 Come in here. You can see him once 
 
 more." 
 
 I open the door, and push the big fair ar- 
 tilleryman into the room where his brother 
 has just died. 
 
 I turn back the sheet and uncover the face 
 of the corpse. The flesh is still warm. 
 
 The big fellow looks like a peasant. He 
 holds his helmet in both hands, and stares at 
 his brother's face with eyes full of horror and 
 amazement. Then suddenly, he begins to cry 
 out: 
 
 "Poor Andre! Poor Andre!" 
 
 This cry of the rough man is unexpected, 
 and grandiose as the voice of ancient trage- 
 dians chanting the threnody of a hero. 
 
 Then he drops his helmet, throws himself 
 on his knees beside the death-bed, takes the 
 dead face between his hands and kisses it 
 gently and slowly with a little sound of the 
 lips, as one kisses a baby's hand. 
 
 I take him by the arm and lead him away. 
 His sturdy body is shaken by sobs which are 
 
92 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 like the neighing of a horse; he is blinded by 
 his tears, and knocks against all the furni- 
 ture. He can do nothing but lament in a 
 broken voice: 
 
 "Poor Andre! Poor Andre!" 
 
 XXVI 
 
 La Gloriette is amongst the pine-trees. I 
 lift up a corner of the canvas and he is there. 
 In spite of the livid patches on the skin, in 
 spite of the rigidity of the features, and the 
 absence for all time of the glance, it is un- 
 doubtedly the familiar face. 
 
 What a long time he suffered to win the 
 right to be at last this thing which suffers no 
 more! 
 
 I draw back the winding-sheet. The body 
 is as yet but little touched by corruption. 
 The dressings are in place, as before. And 
 as before, I think, as I draw back the sheet, of 
 the look he will turn on me at the moment of 
 suffering. 
 
 But there is no longer any look, no longer 
 any suffering, no longer even any movements. 
 Only, only unimaginable eternity. 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 93 
 
 For whom is the damp autumn breeze which 
 flutters the canvas hung before the door? 
 For whom the billowy murmur of the pine- 
 trees and the rays of light crossed by a flight 
 of insects? For whom this growling of can- 
 non mingling now with the landscape like one 
 of the sounds of nature? For me only, for 
 me, alone here with the dead. 
 
 The corpse is still so near to the living man 
 that I cannot make up my mind that I am 
 alone, that I cannot make up my mind to 
 think as when I am alone. 
 
 For indeed we spent too many days hoping 
 together, enduring together, and if you will 
 allow me to say so, my comrade, suffering to- 
 gether. We spent too many days wishing 
 for the end of the fever, examining the wound, 
 searching after the deeply rooted cause of the 
 disaster — both tremulous, you from the effort 
 to bear your pain, I sometimes from having 
 inflicted it. 
 
 We spent so many days, do you remember, 
 oh, body without a soul ... so many days 
 fondly expecting the medal you had deserved. 
 But it seems that one must have given an eye 
 or a limb to be put on the list, and you, all of 
 
94 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 a sudden, you gave your life. The medal had 
 not come, for it does not travel so quickly as 
 death. 
 
 So many days! And now we are together 
 again, for the last time. 
 
 Well! I came for a certain purpose. I 
 came to learn certain things at last that your 
 body can tell me now. 
 
 I open the case. As before, I cut the 
 dressings with the shining scissors. And I 
 was just about to say to you, as before: "If 
 I hurt you, call out." 
 
 XXVII 
 
 At the edge of the beetroot field, a few 
 paces from the road, in the white sand of 
 Champagne, there is a burial-ground. 
 
 Branches of young beech encircle it, mak- 
 ing a rustic barrier that shuts out nothing, but 
 allows the eyes and the winds to wander at 
 will. There is a porch like those of Norman 
 gardens. Near the entrance four pine-trees 
 were planted, and these have died standing 1 
 at their posts, like soldiers. 
 
 It is a burial-ground of men. 
 
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 95 
 
 In the villages, round the churches, or on 
 the fair hill-sides, among vines and flowers, 
 there are ancient graveyards which the cen- 
 turies filled slowly, and where woman sleeps 
 beside man, and the child beside the grand- 
 father. 
 
 But this burial-ground owes nothing to old 
 age or sickness. It is the burial-ground of 
 young, strong men. 
 
 We may read their names on the hundreds 
 of little crosses which repeat daily in speech- 
 less unison: "There must be something more 
 precious than life, more necessary than life 
 . . . since we are here." 
 
THE DEATH OF MERCIER 
 
 MERCIER is dead, and I saw his corpse 
 weep. ... I did not think such a 
 thing possible. 
 
 The orderly had just washed his face and 
 combed his grey hair. 
 
 I said: "You are not forty yet, , my poor 
 Mercier, and your hair is almost white al- 
 ready." 
 
 "It is because my life has been a very hard 
 one, and I have had so many sorrows. I 
 have worked so hard ... so hard! And I 
 have had so little luck." 
 
 There are pitiful little wrinkles all over his 
 face; a thousand disappointments have left 
 indelible traces there. And yet his eyes are 
 always smiling; from out his faded features 
 they shine, bright with an artless candour 
 and radiant with hope. 
 
 "You will cure me, and perhaps I shall be 
 luckier in the future." 
 
 I say "yes," and I think, "Alas! No, 
 
 no. 
 
 96 
 
THE DEATH OF MERCIER 97 
 
 But suddenly he calls me. Great dark hol- 
 lows appear under the smiling eyes. A livid 
 sweat bathes his forehead. 
 
 "Come, come!" he says. "Something ter- 
 rible is taking hold of me. Surely I am go- 
 ing to die." 
 
 We busy ourselves with the poor paralysed 
 body. The face alone labours to translate its 
 sufferings. The hands make the very slight- 
 est movement on the sheet. The bullets of 
 the machine-gun have cut off all the rest from 
 the sources of life. 
 
 We do what we can, but I feel his heart 
 beating more feebly; his lips make immense 
 efforts to beg for one drop, one drop only 
 from the vast cup of air. 
 
 Gradually he escapes from this hell. I di- 
 vine that his hand makes a movement as if 
 to detain mine. 
 
 "Stay by me," he says; "I am afraid." 
 
 I stay by him. The sweat no longer stands 
 on his brow. The horrible distress passes 
 off. The air flows again into the miserable 
 breast. The gentle eyes have not ceased to 
 smile. 
 
 "You will save me after all," he says; 
 
98 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 "I have had too miserable a life to die yet, 
 Monsieur." 
 
 I press his hand to give him confidence, 
 and I feel that his hard hand is happy in 
 mine. My fingers have groped in his flesh, 
 his blood has flowed over them, and this 
 creates strong ties between two men. 
 
 Calm seems completely restored. I talk to 
 him of his beautiful native place. He was a 
 baker in a village of Le Cantal. I passed 
 through it once as a traveller in peace time. 
 We recall the scent of the juniper-bushes on 
 the green slopes in summer, and the mineral 
 fountains with wonderful flavours that gush 
 forth among the mountains. 
 
 "Oh!" he exclaims, "I shall always see 
 you!" 
 
 "You will see me, Mercier?" 
 
 He is a very simple fellow; he tries to ex- 
 plain, and merely adds: 
 
 "In my eyes. ... I shall always see you 
 in my eyes." 
 
 What else does he see? What other thing 
 is suddenly reflected in his eyes? 
 
 "I think . . . oh, it is beginning again!" 
 
 It is true; the spasm is beginning again. 
 
THE DEATH OF MERCIER 99 
 
 It is terrible. In spite of our efforts, it over- 
 comes the victim, and this time we are help- 
 less. 
 
 "I feel that I am going to die," he says. 
 
 The smiling eyes are still fixed imploringly 
 upon me. 
 
 "But you will save me, you will save 
 me!" 
 
 Death has already laid a disfiguring hand 
 on Mercier. 
 
 "Stay by me." 
 
 Yes, I will stay by you, and hold your hand. 
 Is there nothing more I can do for you? 
 
 His nostrils quiver. It is hard to have 
 been wretched for forty years, and to have 
 to give up the humble hope of smelling the 
 pungent scent of the juniper-bushes once 
 more. . . . 
 
 His lips contract, and then relax gradually, 
 so sadly. It is hard to have suffered for forty 
 years, and to be unable to quench one's last 
 thirst with the wonderful waters of our moun- 
 tain springs. . . . 
 
 Now the dark sweat gathers again on the 
 hollow brow. Oh, it is hard to die after forty 
 years of toil, without ever having had leisure 
 
100 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 to wipe the sweat from a brow that has al- 
 ways been bent over one's work. 
 
 The sacrifice is immense, and we cannot 
 choose our hour; we must make it as soon as 
 we hear the voice that demands it. 
 
 The man must lay down his tools and say: 
 "Here I am." 
 
 Oh, how hard it is to leave this life of un- 
 ceasing toil and sorrow ! 
 
 The eyes still smile feebly. They smile to 
 the last moment. 
 
 He speaks no more. He breathes no more. 
 The heart throbs wildly, then stops dead like 
 a foundered horse. 
 
 Mercier is dead. The pupils of his eyes are 
 solemnly distended upon a glassy abyss. All 
 is over. I have not saved him. . . . 
 
 Then from those dead eyes great tears ooze 
 slowly and flow upon his cheeks. I see his 
 features contract as if to weep throughout 
 eternity. 
 
 I keep the dead hand still clasped in mine 
 for several long minutes. 
 
VERDUN 
 
 February-April 191 6 
 
 WE were going northward by forced 
 marches, through a France that 
 was like a mournful garden planted 
 with crosses. We were no longer in doubt as 
 to our appointed destination; every day since 
 
 we had disembarked at B our orders 
 
 had enjoined us to hasten our advance to 
 the fighting units of the Army Corps. This 
 Army Corps was contracting, and drawing it- 
 self together hurriedly, its head already in the 
 thick of the fray, its tail still winding along 
 the roads, across the battle-field of the Marne. 
 February was closing in, damp and icy, with 
 squalls of sleet, under a sullen, hideous sky, 
 lowering furiously down to the level of the 
 ground. Everywhere there were graves, uni- 
 formly decent, or rather according to pattern, 
 showing a shield of tri-colour or black and 
 white, and figures. Suddenly, we came upon 
 immense flats, whence the crosses stretched 
 out their arms between the poplars like men 
 101 
 
102 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 struggling to save themselves from being en- 
 gulfed. Many ancient villages, humble, ir- 
 remediable ruins. And yet here and there, 
 perched upon these, frail cabins of planks and 
 tiles, sending forth thin threads of smoke, and 
 emitting a timid light, in an attempt to be- 
 gin life again as before, on the same spot as 
 before. Now and again we chanced upon a 
 hamlet which the hurricane had passed by al- 
 most completely, full to overflowing with the 
 afflux of neighbouring populations. 
 
 Beyond P , our advance, though it con- 
 tinued to be rapid, became very difficult, ow- 
 ing to the confluence of convoys and troops. 
 The main roads, reserved for the military 
 masses which were under the necessity of 
 moving rapidly, arriving early, and striking 
 suddenly, were barred to us. From every 
 point of the horizon disciplined multitudes 
 converged, with their arsenal of formidable 
 implements, rolling along in an atmosphere 
 of benzine and hot oil. Through this ordered 
 mass, our convoys threaded their way tena- 
 ciously and advanced. We could see on the 
 hill sides, crawling like a clan of migrating 
 ants, stretcher-bearers and their dogs drawing 
 
VERDUN 103 
 
 handcarts for the wounded, then the columns 
 of orderlies, muddy and exhausted, then the 
 ambulances, which every week of war loads a 
 little more heavily, dragged along by horses 
 in a steam of sweat. 
 
 From time to time, the whole train halted 
 at some cross-road, and the ambulances al- 
 lowed more urgent things to pass in front of 
 them — things designed to kill, sturdy grey 
 mortars borne along post haste in a metallic 
 rumble. 
 
 A halt, a draught of wine mingled with rain, 
 a few minutes to choke over a mouthful of 
 stale bread, and we were off again, longing 
 for the next halt, for a dry shelter, for an 
 hour of real sleep. 
 
 Soon after leaving C we began to meet 
 
 fugitives. This complicated matters very 
 much, and the spectacle began to show an 
 odious likeness to the scenes of the beginning 
 of the war, the scenes of the great retreat. 
 
 Keeping along the roadsides, the by-roads, 
 the field-paths, they were fleeing from the 
 Verdun district, whence they had been evacu- 
 ated by order. They were urging on miser- 
 able old horses, drawing frail carts, their 
 
104 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 wheels sunk in the ruts up to the nave, loaded 
 with mattresses and eiderdowns, with appli- 
 ances for eating and sleeping, and sometimes 
 too, with cages in which birds were twitter- 
 ing. On they went, from village to village, 
 seeking an undiscoverable lodging, but not 
 complaining, saying merely: 
 
 "You are going to Verdun? We have 
 
 just come from X -. We were ordered 
 
 to leave. It is very difficult to find a place to 
 settle down in." 
 
 Women passed. Two of them were drag- 
 ging a little baby-carriage in which an infant 
 lay asleep. One of them was quite young, the 
 other old. They held up their skirts out of the 
 mud. They were wearing little town shoes, 
 and every minute they sank into the slime like 
 ourselves, sometimes above their ankles. 
 
 All day long we encountered similar pro- 
 cessions. I do not remember seeing one of 
 these women weep; but they seemed terri- 
 fied, and mortally tired. 
 
 Meanwhile, the sound of the guns became 
 fuller and more regular. All the roads we 
 caught sight of in the country seemed to be 
 bearing their load of men and of machines. 
 
VERDUN 105 
 
 Here and there a horse which had succumbed 
 at its task lay rotting at the foot of a hillock. 
 A subdued roar rose to the ear, made up of 
 trampling hoofs, of grinding wheels, of the 
 buzz of motors, and of a multitude talking 
 and eating on the march. 
 
 Suddenly we debouched at the edge of a 
 wood upon a height whence we could see the 
 whole battle-field. It was a vast expanse of 
 plains and slopes, studded with the grey woods 
 of winter. Long trails of smoke from burning 
 buildings settled upon the landscape. And 
 other trails, minute and multi-coloured, rose 
 from the ground wherever projectiles were 
 raining. Nothing more: wisps of smoke, 
 brief flashes visible even in broad daylight, 
 and a string of captive balloons, motionless 
 and observant witnesses of all. 
 
 But we were already descending the incline 
 and the various planes of the landscape melted 
 one after the other. As we were passing over 
 a bridge, I saw in a group of soldiers a friend 
 I had not met since the beginning of the war. 
 We could not stop, so he walked along with 
 me for a while, and we spent these few minutes 
 recalling the things of the past. Then as he 
 
106 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 left me we embraced, though we had never 
 done so in times of peace. 
 
 Night was falling. Knowing that we were 
 now at our last long lap, we encouraged the 
 
 worn-out men. At R I lost touch with 
 
 my formation. I halted on the roadside, call- 
 ing aloud into the darkness. An artillery- 
 train passed, covering me with mud to my 
 eyes. Finally, I picked up my friends, and 
 we marched on through villages illumined by 
 the camp fires which were flickering under a 
 driving rain, through a murky country which 
 the flash of cannon suddenly showed to be 
 covered with a multitude of men, of horses, 
 and of martial objects. 
 
 It was February 27. Between ten and 
 eleven at night we arrived at a hospital in- 
 stalled in some wooden sheds, and feverishly 
 
 busy. We were at B , a miserable village 
 
 on which next day the Germans launched some 
 thirty monster-shells, yet failed to kill so much 
 as a mouse. 
 
 The night was spent on straw, to the sten- 
 torian snores of fifty men overcome by fatigue. 
 Then reveille, and again, liquid mud over the 
 ankles. As the main road was forbidden to 
 
VERDUN 107 
 
 our ambulances there was an excited discus- 
 sion as a result of which we separated: the 
 vehicles to go in search of a by-way, and we, 
 the pedestrians, to skirt the roads on which 
 long lines of motor-lorries, coming and going, 
 passed each other in haste like the carriages of 
 an immense train. 
 
 We had known since midnight where we 
 were to take up our quarters; the suburb of 
 
 G was only an hour's march further on. 
 
 In the fields, right and left, were bivouacs of 
 colonial troops with muddy helmets; they 
 had come back from the firing line, and seemed 
 strangely quiet. In front of us lay the town, 
 half hidden, full of crackling sounds and 
 echoes. Beyond, the hills of the Meuse, on 
 which we could distinguish the houses of the 
 villages, and the continuous rain of machine- 
 gun bullets. We skirted a meadow strewn 
 with forsaken furniture, beds, chests, a whole 
 fortune which looked like the litter of a hos- 
 pital. At last we arrived at the first houses, 
 and we were shown the place where we were 
 
 expected. 
 
 * * * 
 
 There were two brick buildings of several 
 
108 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 storeys, connected by a glazed corridor; the 
 rest of the enclosure was occupied by wooden 
 sheds. Behind lay orchards and gardens, the 
 first houses of the suburb. In front, the wall 
 of a park, a meadow, a railway track, and La 
 Route, the wonderful and terrible road that 
 enters the town at this very point. 
 
 Groups of lightly wounded men were hob- 
 bling towards the hospital; the incessant rush 
 of motors kept up the feverish circulation of 
 a demolished ant-hill. 
 
 As we approached the buildings, a doctor 
 came out to meet us. 
 
 "Come, come. There's work enough for a 
 month." 
 
 It was true. The effluvium and the moans 
 of several hundreds of wounded men greeted 
 
 us. Ambulance No , which we had come 
 
 to relieve, had been hard at it since the night 
 before, without having made much visible 
 progress. Doctors and orderlies, their faces 
 haggard from a night of frantic toil, came 
 and went, choosing among the heaps of 
 wounded, and tended two while twenty more 
 poured in. 
 
 While waiting for our material, we went 
 
VERDUN 109 
 
 over the buildings. But a few days before, 
 contagious diseases had been treated here. A 
 hasty disinfection had left the wards reeking 
 with formaline which rasped the throat with- 
 out disguising the sickly stench of the crowded 
 sufferers. They were huddled round the 
 stoves in the rooms, lying upon the beds of 
 the dormitories, or crouching on the flags of 
 the passages. 
 
 In each ward of the lower storey there 
 were thirty or forty men of every branch of 
 the service, moaning and going out from time 
 to time to crawl to the latrines, or, mug in 
 hand, to fetch something to drink. 
 
 As we explored further, the scene became 
 more terrible; in the back rooms and in the 
 upper building a number of severely wounded 
 men had been placed, who began to howl as 
 soon as we entered. Many of them had been 
 there for several days. The brutality of cir- 
 cumstances, the relief of units, the enormous 
 sum of work, all combined to create one of 
 those situations which dislocate and over- 
 whelm the most willing service. 
 
 We opened a door, and the men who were 
 lying within began to scream at the top of their 
 
110 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 voices. Some, lying on their stretchers on 
 the floor, seized us by the legs as we passed, 
 imploring us to attend to them. A few be- 
 wildered orderlies hurried hither and thither, 
 powerless to meet the needs of this mass of 
 suffering. Every moment I felt my coat 
 seized, and heard a voice saying: 
 
 "I have been here four days. Dress my 
 wounds, for God's sake." 
 
 And when I answered that I would come 
 back again immediately, the poor fellow be- 
 gan to cry. 
 
 "They all say they will come back, but 
 they never do." 
 
 Occasionally a man in delirium talked to us 
 incoherently as we moved along. Sometimes 
 we went round a quiet bed to see the face of 
 the sufferer, and found only a corpse. 
 
 Each ward we inspected revealed the same 
 distress, exhaled the same odour of antisep- 
 tics and excrements, for the orderlies could 
 not always get to the patient in time, and 
 many of the men relieved themselves appar- 
 ently unconcerned. 
 
 I remember a little deserted room in dis- 
 order, on the table a bowl of coffee with bread 
 
VERDUN 111 
 
 floating in it; a woman's slippers on the floor, 
 and in a corner, toilet articles and some 
 strands of fair hair. ... I remember a cor- 
 ner where a wounded man suffering from men- 
 ingitis, called out unceasingly: 27, 28, 
 29 . . . 27, 28, 29 ... a prey to a strange 
 obsession of numbers. I see a kitchen where 
 a soldier was plucking a white fowl ... I 
 see an Algerian non-commissioned officer pac- 
 ing the corridor. . . . 
 
 Towards noon, the head doctor arrived 
 followed by my comrades, and our vehicles. 
 With him I made the round of the buildings 
 again while they were unpacking our stores. 
 I had got hold of a syringe, while waiting 
 for a knife, and I set to work distributing 
 morphia. The task before us seemed im- 
 mense, and every minute it increased. We 
 began to divide it hastily, to assign to each 
 his part. The cries of the sufferers muffled 
 the sound of a formidable cannonade. An 
 assistant at my side, whom I knew to be en- 
 ergetic and resolute, muttered between his 
 teeth: "No! no! Anything rather than 
 war!" 
 
112 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 But we had first to introduce some order 
 into our Inferno. 
 
 * * * 
 
 In a few hours this order appeared and 
 reigned. We were exhausted by days of 
 marching and nights of broken sleep, but men 
 put off their packs and set to work with a 
 silent courage that seemed to exalt even the 
 least generous natures. Our first spell lasted 
 for thirty-six hours, during which each one 
 gave to the full measure of his powers, with- 
 out a thought of self. 
 
 Four operation-wards had been arranged. 
 The wounded were brought in unceasingly, 
 and a grave and prudent mind pronounced 
 upon the state of each, upon his fate, his fu- 
 ture. . . . Confronted by the overwhelming 
 flood of work to be done, the surgeon, before 
 seizing the knife, had to meditate deeply, and 
 make a decision as to the sacrifice which 
 would ensure life, or give some hope of life. 
 In a moment of effective thought, he had to 
 perceive and weigh a man's whole existence, 
 then act, with method and audacity. 
 
 As soon as one wounded man left the ward, 
 another was brought in; while the prepara- 
 
VERDUN 113 
 
 tions for the operation were being made, we 
 went to choose among and classify the pa- 
 tients beforehand, for many needed nothing 
 more; they had passed beyond human aid, 
 and awaited, numb and unconscious, the 
 crowning mercy of death. 
 
 The word "untransportable" once pro- 
 nounced, directed all our work. The wounded 
 capable of waiting a few hours longer for 
 attention, and of going elsewhere for it were 
 removed. But when the buzz of the motors 
 was heard, every one wanted to go, and men 
 begging to be taken away entered upon their 
 death agony as they assured us they felt quite 
 strong enough to travel. . . . 
 
 Some told us their histories; the majority 
 were silent. They wanted to go elsewhere 
 . . . and above all, to sleep, to drink. Nat- 
 ural wants dominated, and made them forget 
 the anguish of their wounds. . . . 
 
 I remember one poor fellow who was asked 
 if he wanted anything. . . . He had a terrible 
 wound in the chest, and was waiting to be 
 examined. He replied timidly that he wanted 
 the urinal, and when the orderly hurried to 
 him bringing it, he was dead. 
 
114 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 The pressure of urgent duty had made us 
 quite unmindful of the battle close by, and of 
 the deafening cannonade. However, towards 
 evening, the buildings trembled under the 
 fury of the detonations. A little armoured 
 train had taken up its position near us. The 
 muzzle of a naval gun protruded from it, 
 and from moment to moment thrust out a 
 broad tongue of flame with a catastrophic 
 roar. 
 
 The work was accelerated at the very height 
 of the uproar. Rivers of water had run along 
 the corridors, washing down the mud, the 
 blood and the refuse of the operation-wards. 
 The men who had been operated on were 
 carried to beds on which clean sheets had been 
 spread. The open windows let in the pure, 
 keen air, and night fell on the hillsides of the 
 Meuse, where the tumult raged and lightnings 
 flashed. 
 
 Sometimes a wounded man brought us the 
 latest news of the battle. Between his groans, 
 he described the incredible bombardment, the 
 obstinate resistance, the counter-attacks at the 
 height of the hurly-burly. 
 
 All these simple fellows ended their story 
 
VERDUN 115 
 
 with the same words, surprising words at such 
 a moment of suffering: 
 
 "They can't get through now. . . . 
 
 Then they began to moan again. 
 
 During the terrible weeks of the battle, it 
 was from the lips of these tortured men that 
 we heard the most amazing words of hope and 
 confidence, uttered between two cries of an- 
 guish. 
 
 The first night passed under this stress and 
 pressure. The morning found us face to face 
 with labours still vast, but classified, divided, 
 and half determined. 
 
 A superior officer came to visit us. He 
 seemed anxious. 
 
 "They have spotted you," he said. "I 
 hope you mayn't have to work upon each 
 other. You will certainly be bombarded at 
 noon." 
 
 We had forgotten this prophecy by the time 
 it was fulfilled. 
 
 About noon, the air was rent by a screech- 
 ing whistle, and some dozen shells fell within 
 the hospital enclosure, piercing one of the 
 buildings, but sparing the men. This was the 
 beginning of an irregular but almost continu- 
 
116 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 ous bombardment, which was not specially di- 
 rected against us, no doubt, but which threat- 
 ened us incessantly. 
 
 No cellars. Nothing but thin walls. The 
 work went on. 
 
 On the third day a lull enabled us to com- 
 plete our organisation. The enemy was bom- 
 barding the town and the lines persistently. 
 Our artillery replied, shell for shell, in furious 
 salvos; a sort of thunderous wall rose around 
 us which seemed to us like a rampart. . . . 
 The afflux of wounded had diminished. We 
 had just received men who had been fighting 
 in the open country, as in the first days of the 
 war, but under a hail of projectiles hitherto 
 reserved for the destruction of fortresses. 
 Our. comrade D arrived from the battle- 
 field on foot, livid, supporting his shattered 
 elbow. He stammered out a tragic story: his 
 regiment had held its ground under a surging 
 tide of fire; thousands of huge shells had 
 fallen in a narrow ravine, and he had seen 
 limbs hanging in the thicket, a savage dis- 
 persal of human bodies. The men had held 
 their ground, and then had fought. . . . 
 
 A quarter of an hour after his arrival 
 
VERDUN 117 
 
 D , refreshed and strengthened, was con- 
 templating the big wound in his arm on the 
 operating table, and talking calmly of his 
 ruined future. . . . 
 
 Towards the evening of this day, we were 
 able to go out of the building, and breathe the 
 unpolluted air for a few minutes. 
 
 The noise reigned supreme, as silence reigns 
 elsewhere. We were impregnated, almost in- 
 toxicated with it. . . . 
 
 A dozen of those captive balloons which 
 the soldiers call "sausages" formed an aerial 
 semi-circle and kept watch. 
 
 On the other side of the hills the German 
 balloons also watched in the purple mist to 
 the East. 
 
 Night came, and the balloons remained 
 faithfully at their posts. We were in the 
 centre of a circus of fire, woven by all the 
 lightnings of the cannonade. To the south- 
 west, however, a black breach opened, and 
 one divined a free passage there towards the 
 interior of the country and towards silence. 
 A few hundred feet from us, a cross-road 
 continually shelled by the enemy echoed to 
 the shock of projectiles battering the ground 
 
118 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 like hammers on an anvil. We often found at 
 our feet fragments of steel still hot, which in 
 the gloom seemed slightly phosphorescent. 
 
 From this day forth, a skilful combination 
 of our hours and our means enabled us to take 
 short spells of rest in turn. However, for a 
 hundred reasons sleep was impossible to me, 
 and for several weeks I forgot what it was to 
 slumber. 
 
 I used to retire, then, from time to time to 
 
 the room set apart for my friend V and 
 
 myself, and lie down on a bed, overcome by a 
 fatigue that verged on stupefaction; but the 
 perpetual clatter of sabots and shoes in the 
 passage kept the mind alert and the eyes open. 
 The chorus of the wounded rose in gusts; 
 there were always in the adjoining wards 
 some dozen men wounded in the head, and 
 suffering from meningitis, which provoked a 
 kind of monotonous howling; there were men 
 wounded in the abdomen, and crying out 
 for the drink that was denied them; there 
 were the men wounded in the chest, and racked 
 by a low cough choked with blood . . . and 
 
VERDUN 119 
 
 all the rest who lay moaning, hoping for an 
 impossible repose. . . . 
 
 Then I would get up and go back to work, 
 haunted by the terrible fear that excess of 
 fatigue might have made my eye less keen, 
 my hand less steady than imperious duty re- 
 quired. 
 
 At night more especially, the bombardment 
 was renewed, in hurricane gusts. 
 
 The air, rent by projectiles, mewed like a 
 furious cat; the detonations came closer, 
 then retired methodically, like the footsteps 
 of a giant on guard around us, above us, upon 
 us. 
 
 Every morning the orderlies took advantage 
 of a moment of respite to run and inspect the 
 new craters, and unearth the fuses of shells. 
 ... I thought of the delightful phrase of as- 
 sistant-surgeon M whom we had at- 
 tended for a wound on the head, and who 
 said to me as I was taking him back to bed, 
 and we heard the explosions close by: 
 
 "Oh, the marmites (big shells) always fall 
 short of one." 
 
 But to a great many of the wounded, the 
 perpetual uproar was intolerable. They im- 
 
120 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 plored us with tears to send them somewhere 
 else; those we kept were, as a fact, unable to 
 bear removal; we had to soothe them and 
 keep them, in spite of everything. Some, 
 overcome by fatigue, slept all day; others 
 showed extraordinary indifference, perhaps 
 due to a touch of delirium, like the man with 
 a wound in the abdomen which I was dress- 
 ing one morning, and who when he saw me 
 turn my head at the sound of an explosion 
 which ploughed up a neighbouring field, as- 
 sured me quietly that "those things weren't 
 dangerous. " 
 
 One night a policeman ran in with his face 
 covered with blood. 
 
 He was waving a lantern which he used to 
 regulate the wheeled traffic, and he main- 
 tained that the enemy had spotted his lamp 
 and had peppered him with bullets. As a 
 fact, he had only some slight scratches. He 
 went off, washed and bandaged, but only to 
 come back to us the next day dead. A large 
 fragment of iron had penetrated his 
 eye. 
 
 There was an entrance ward, where we 
 sorted the cases. Ten times a day we thought 
 
VERDUN 121 
 
 we had emptied this reservoir of misery; but 
 we always found it full again, paved with 
 muddy stretchers on which men lay, panting 
 and waiting. 
 
 Opposite to this ante-room was a clearing 
 ward; it seemed less dismal than the other, 
 though it was just as bare, and not any 
 lighter; but the wounded there were clean; 
 they had been operated on, they wore white 
 bandages, they had been comforted with hot 
 drinks and with all sorts of hopes, for they 
 had already escaped the first summons of 
 Death. 
 
 Between these two rooms, a clerk lived 
 in the draught, the victim of an accumula- 
 tion of indispensable and stupefying docu- 
 ments. 
 
 In the beginning, the same man sat for 
 three days and three nights chained to this 
 ungrateful task until at last we saw him, his 
 face convulsed, almost mad after unremit- 
 tingly labelling all this suffering with names 
 and figures. 
 
 The first days of March were chilly, with 
 
122 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 alternations of snow and sunshine. When the 
 air was pure, we heard it vibrate with the life 
 of aeroplanes and echo to their contests. The 
 dry throb of machine-guns, the incessant 
 scream of shrapnel formed a kind of crack- 
 ling dome over our heads. The German 
 aeroplanes overwhelmed the environs with 
 bombs which gave a prolonged whistle before 
 tearing up the soil or gutting a house. One 
 fell a few paces from the ward where I was 
 operating on a man who had been wounded 
 in the head. I remember the brief glance I 
 cast outwards and the screams and head- 
 long flight of the men standing under the 
 windows. 
 
 One morning I saw an airship which was 
 cruising over the hills of the Meuse suddenly 
 begin to trail after it, comet-wise, a thick 
 tail of black smoke, and then rush to the 
 earth, irradiated by a burst of flame, bril- 
 liant even in the daylight. And I thought 
 of the two men who were experiencing this 
 fall. 
 
 The military situation improved daily, but 
 the battle was no less strenuous. The guns 
 used by the enemy for the destruction of men 
 
VERDUN 123 
 
 produced horrible wounds, certainly more 
 severe on the whole than those we had tended 
 during the first twenty months of a war that 
 has been pitiless from its inception. All doc- 
 tors must have noted the hideous success 
 achieved in a very short time, in perfecting 
 means of laceration. And we marvelled bit- 
 terly that man could adventure his frail or- 
 ganism through the deflagrations of a chem- 
 istry hardly disciplined as yet, which attains 
 and surpasses the brutality of the blind 
 forces of Nature. We marvelled more es- 
 pecially that flesh so delicate, the product and 
 the producer of harmony, could endure such 
 shocks and such dilapidations without instant 
 disintegration. 
 
 Many men came to us with one or several 
 limbs torn off completely, yet they came still 
 living. . . . Some had thirty or forty wounds, 
 and even more. We examined each body 
 systematically, passing from one sad discovery 
 to another. They reminded us of those 
 derelict vessels which let in the water every- 
 where. And just because these wrecks 
 seemed irredeemably condemned to disaster, 
 we clung to them in the obstinate hope of 
 
124 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 bringing them into port and perhaps floating 
 them again. 
 
 When the pressure was greatest, it was im- 
 possible to undress the men and get them 
 washed properly before bringing them into 
 the operating-ward. The problem was in 
 these cases to isolate the work of the knife as 
 far as possible from the surrounding mud, 
 dirt and vermin: I have seen soldiers so cov- 
 ered with lice that the different parts of the 
 dressings were invaded by them, and even the 
 wounds. The poor creatures apologised, as if 
 they were in some way to blame. . . . 
 
 At such moments patients succeeded each 
 other so rapidly that we knew nothing of 
 them beyond their wounds: the man was car- 
 ried away, still plunged in sleep ; we had made 
 all the necessary decisions for him without 
 having heard his voice or considered his 
 face. 
 
 We avoided overcrowding by at once evac- 
 uating all those on whom we had operated 
 as soon as they were no longer in danger of 
 complications. We loaded them up on the 
 ambulances which followed one upon the 
 other before the door. Some of the patients 
 
VERDUN 125 
 
 came back a few minutes later, riddled with 
 fragments of shell; the driver had not suc- 
 ceeded in dodging the shells, and he was often 
 wounded himself. In like manner the 
 stretcher-bearers as they passed along the 
 road were often hit themselves, and were 
 brought in on their own hand-carts. 
 
 One evening there was a "gas warning." 
 Some gusts of wind arrived, bearing along an 
 acrid odour. All the wounded were given 
 masks and spectacles as a precaution. We 
 hung them even on the heads of the beds 
 where dying men lay . . . and then we 
 waited. Happily, the wave spent itself before 
 it reached us. 
 
 A wounded man was brought in that eve- 
 ning with several injuries caused by a gas- 
 shell. His eyes had quite disappeared under 
 his swollen lids. His clothing was so im- 
 pregnated with the poison that we all began 
 to cough and weep, and a penetrating odour 
 of garlic and citric acid hung about the ward 
 for some time. 
 
 Many things we had perforce to leave to 
 chance, and I thought, during this alarm, of 
 men just operated on, and plunged in the 
 
126 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 stupor of the chloroform, whom we should 
 have to allow to wake, and then mask them 
 immediately, or . . . 
 
 Ah, well! ... in the midst of all this un- 
 imaginable tragedy, laughter was not quite 
 quenched. This phenomenon is perhaps one 
 of the characteristics, one of the greatnesses 
 of our race — and in a more general way, no 
 doubt, it is an imperative need of humanity 
 at large. 
 
 Certain of the wounded took a pride in 
 cracking jokes, and they did so in words to 
 which circumstances lent a poignant pictur- 
 esqueness. These jests drew a laugh from us 
 which was often closely akin to tears. 
 
 One morning, in the sorting room, I noticed 
 a big, curly-haired fellow who had lost a foot, 
 and had all sorts of wounds and fractures in 
 both legs. All these had been hastily bound 
 up, clothing and all, in the hollow of the 
 stretcher, which was stiff with blood. When 
 I called the stretcher-bearers and contemplated 
 this picture, the big man raised himself on his 
 elbow and said: 
 
VERDUN 127 
 
 "Please give me a cigarette." 
 
 Then he began to smoke, smiling cheer- 
 fully and telling absurd stories. We took off 
 one of his legs up to the thigh, and as soon 
 as he recovered consciousness, he asked for 
 another cigarette, and set all the orderlies 
 laughing. 
 
 When, on leaving him, I asked this extraor- 
 dinary man what his calling was, he replied 
 modestly : 
 
 "I am one of the employees of the Vichy 
 Company." 
 
 The orderlies in particular, nearly all sim- 
 ple folks, had a desire to laugh, even when 
 they were worn out with fatigue, which made 
 a pretext of the slightest thing, and notably 
 of danger. One of them, called Tailleur, a 
 buffoon with the airs of an executioner's as- 
 sistant, would call out at the first explosions 
 of a hurricane of shells: 
 
 "Number your arms and legs! Look out 
 for your nuts! The winkles are tumbling 
 about!" 
 
 All my little band would begin to laugh. 
 And I had not the heart to check them, for 
 their faces were drawn with fatigue, and this 
 
128 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 moment of doleful merriment at least pre- 
 vented them from falling asleep as they 
 stood. 
 
 When the explosions came very close, this 
 same Tailleur could not help exclaim- 
 ing: 
 
 "I am not going to be killed by a brick! I 
 am going outside." 
 
 I would look at him with a smile, and he 
 would repeat: "As 'for me, I'm off," care- 
 fully rolling a bandage the while, which he did 
 with great dexterity. 
 
 His mixture of terror and swagger was a 
 perpetual entertainment to us. One night, a 
 hand-grenade fell out of the pocket of one of 
 the wounded. In defiance of orders, Tailleur, 
 who knew nothing at all about the handling 
 of such things, turned it over and examined 
 it for some time, with comic curiosity and dis- 
 trust. 
 
 One day a pig intended for our consump- 
 tion was killed in the pig-sty by fragments 
 of shell. We ate it, and the finding by one 
 of the orderlies of some bits of metal in his 
 portion of meat gave occasion for a great 
 many jests. 
 
VERDUN 129 
 
 For a fortnight we were unable to go be- 
 yond the hospital enclosure. Our longest ex- 
 pedition was to the piece of waste ground 
 which had been allotted to us for a burial 
 ground, a domain the shells were always 
 threatening to plough up. This graveyard in- 
 creased considerably. As it takes a man eight 
 hours to dig a grave for his brother man, one 
 had to set a numerous gang to work all day, 
 to ensure a place for each corpse. 
 
 Sometimes we went into the wooden shed 
 which served as our mortuary. Pere Duval, 
 the oldest of our orderlies, sewed there all 
 day, making shrouds of coarse linen for "his 
 dead." 
 
 They were laid in the earth carefully, side 
 by side, their feet together, their hands 
 crossed on their breasts, when indeed they 
 still possessed hands and feet. . . . Duval 
 also looked after the human debris, and gave 
 it decent sepulture. 
 
 Thus our function was not only to tend the 
 living, but also to honour the dead. The care 
 of what was magniloquently termed their 
 
 "estate" fell to our manager, S . It was 
 
 he who put into a little canvas bag all the 
 
130 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 papers and small possessions found on the 
 victims. He devoted days and nights to a 
 kind of funereal bureaucracy, inevitable even 
 under the fire of the enemy. His occupation, 
 moreover, was not exempt from moral diffi- 
 culties. Thus he found in the pocket of one 
 dead man a woman's card which it was im- 
 possible to send on to his family, and in an- 
 other case, a collection of songs of such a 
 nature that after due deliberation it was de- 
 cided to burn them. 
 
 Let us purify the memories of our martyrs ! 
 
 We had several German wounded to at- 
 tend. One of these, whose leg I had to take 
 off, overwhelmed me with thanks in his na- 
 tive tongue; he had lain for six days on 
 ground over which artillery played unceas- 
 ingly, and contemplated his return to life and 
 the care bestowed on him with a kind of stu- 
 pefaction. 
 
 Another, who had a shattered arm, gave us 
 a good deal of trouble by his amazing un- 
 cleanliness. Before giving him the anaesthetic, 
 the orderly took from his mouth a set of false 
 
VERDUN 131< 
 
 teeth, which he confessed he had not removed 
 for several months, and which exhaled an 
 unimaginable stench. 
 
 I remember, too, a little fair-haired chap of 
 rather chilly demeanour, who suddenly said 
 "Good-bye" to me with lips that quivered like 
 those of a child about to cry. 
 
 The interpreter from Headquarters, my 
 
 friend C , came to see them all as soon as 
 
 they had got over their stupor, and interro- 
 gated them with placid patience, comparing 
 all their statements in order to glean some 
 trustworthy indication. 
 
 Thus days and nights passed by in ceaseless 
 toil, under a perpetual menace, in the midst 
 of an ever-growing fatigue which gave things 
 the substance and aspects they take on in a 
 nightmare. 
 
 The very monotony of this existence was 
 made up of a thousand dramatic details, each 
 of which would have been an event in normal 
 life. I still see, as through the mists of a 
 dream, the orderly of a dying captain sobbing 
 at his bedside and covering his hands with 
 
132 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 kisses. I still hear the little lad whose life 
 blood had ebbed away, saying to me in im- 
 ploring tones: "Save me, Doctor! Save me 
 for my mother!" . . . and I think a man 
 must have heard such words in such a place 
 to understand them aright, I think that every 
 day this man must gain a stricter, a more pre- 
 cise, a more pathetic idea of suffering and of 
 death. 
 
 One Sunday evening, the bombardment was 
 renewed with extraordinary violence. We had 
 
 just sent off General S , who was smoking 
 
 on his stretcher, and chatting calmly and 
 cheerfully; I was operating on an infantryman 
 who had deep wounds in his arms and thighs. 
 Suddenly there was a great commotion. A 
 hurricane of shells fell upon the hospital. 
 I heard a crash which shook the ground and 
 the walls violently, then hurried footsteps and 
 cries in the passage. 
 
 I looked at the man sleeping and breathing 
 heavily, and I almost envied his forgetfulness 
 of all things, the dissolution of his being in a 
 darkness so akin to liberating death. My 
 task completed, I went out to view the dam- 
 age. 
 
VERDUN 133 
 
 A shell had fallen on an angle of the 
 building, blowing in the windows of three 
 wards, scattering stones in all directions, 
 and riddling walls and ceilings with large 
 fragments of metal. The wounded were 
 moaning, shrouded in acrid smoke. They 
 were lying so close to the ground that they 
 had been struck only by plaster and splinters 
 of glass; but the shock had been so great 
 that nearly all of them died within the 
 following hour. 
 
 The next day it was decided that we should 
 change our domicile, and we made ready to 
 carry off our wounded and remove our hospital 
 to a point rather more distant. 
 
 It was a very clear day. In front of us, 
 the main road was covered with men, whom 
 motor vehicles were depositing in groups every 
 minute. We were finishing our final operations 
 and looking out occasionally at these men 
 gathered in the sun, on the slopes and in the 
 ditches. At about one o'clock in the afternoon 
 the air was rent by the shriek of high explo- 
 sives and some shells fell in the midst of the 
 groups. We saw them disperse through the 
 yellowish smoke, and go to lie down a little 
 
134 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 farther off in the fields. Some did not even 
 stir. Stretcher-bearers came up at once, 
 running across the meadow, and brought us 
 two dead men, and nine wounded, who were 
 laid on the operating-table. 
 
 As we tended them during the following 
 hour we looked anxiously at the knots of men 
 who remained in the open, and gradually in- 
 creased, and we asked whether they would not 
 soon go. But there they stayed, and again we 
 heard the dull growl of the discharge, then the 
 whistling overhead, and the explosions of 
 some dozen shells falling upon the men. 
 Crowding to the window, we watched the 
 massacre, and waited to receive the victims. 
 
 My colleague M drew my attention to a 
 
 soldier who was running up the grassy slope 
 on the other side of the road, and whom the 
 shells seemed to be pursuing. 
 
 These were the last wounded we received 
 in the suburb of G . Three hours after- 
 wards, we took up the same life and the same 
 labours again, some way off, for many weeks 
 more. . . . 
 
 Thus things went on, until the day when we, 
 in our turn, were carried off by the automobiles 
 
VERDUN 135 
 
 of the Grand' Route, and landed on the banks 
 of a fair river in a village where there were 
 trees in blossom, and where the next morning 
 we were awakened by the sound of bells and 
 the voices of women. 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 WE had had all the windows opened. 
 From their beds, the wounded could 
 see, through the dancing waves of 
 heat, the heights of Berru and Nogent 
 l'Abbesse, the towers of the Cathedral, still 
 crouching like a dying lion in the middle of 
 the plain of Reims, and the chalky lines of the 
 trenches intersecting the landscape. 
 
 A kind of torpor seemed to hang over the 
 battle-field. Sometimes, a perpendicular col- 
 umn of smoke rose up, in the motionless 
 distance, and the detonation reached us a little 
 while afterwards, as if astray, and ashamed 
 of outraging the radiant silence. 
 
 It was one of the fine days of the summer of 
 19 1 5, one of those days when the supreme 
 indifference of Nature makes one feel the 
 burden of war more cruelly, when the beauty 
 of the sky seems to proclaim its remoteness 
 from the anguish of the human heart. 
 
 We had finished our morning round when 
 an ambulance drew up at the entrance. 
 136 
 
THE SACRIFICE 137/ 
 
 "Doctor on duty!" 
 
 I went down the steps. The chauffeur 
 explained : 
 
 "There are three slightly wounded men. 
 I am going to take on further, and then there 
 are some severely wounded . . ." 
 
 He opened the back of his car. On one 
 side three soldiers were seated, dozing. On 
 the other, there were stretchers, and I saw 
 the feet of the men lying upon them. Then, 
 from the depths of the vehicle came a low, 
 grave, uncertain voice which said: 
 
 "I am one of the severely wounded, Mon- 
 
 sieur." 
 
 He was a lad rather than a man. He had 
 a little soft down on his chin, a well-cut 
 aquiline nose, dark eyes to which extreme 
 weakness gave an appearance of exaggerated 
 size, and the grey pallor of those who have 
 lost much blood. 
 
 "Oh! how tired I am!" he said. 
 
 He held on to the stretcher with both 
 hands as he was carried up the steps. He 
 raised his head a little, gave a glance full of 
 astonishment, distress, and lassitude at the 
 green trees, the smiling hills, the glowing 
 
138 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 horizon, and then he found himself inside the 
 house. 
 
 Here begins the story of Gaston Leglise. 
 It is a modest story and a very sad story; 
 but indeed, are there any stories now in the 
 world that are not sad? 
 
 I will tell it day by day, as we lived it, as 
 it is graven in my memory, and as it is graven 
 in your memory and in your flesh, my friend 
 Leglise. 
 
 * ♦ * 
 
 Leglise only had a whiff of chloroform, and 
 he fell at once into a sleep closely akin to 
 death. 
 
 "Let us make haste," said the head doctor. 
 "We shall have the poor boy dying on the 
 table. ,, 
 
 Then he shook his head, adding: 
 
 "Both knees! Both knees! What a fu- 
 ture!" 
 
 The burden of experience is a sorrowful 
 one. It is always sorrowful to have sufficient 
 memory to discern the future. 
 
 Small splinters from a grenade make very 
 little wounds in a man's legs; but great 
 disorders may enter by way of those little 
 
THE SACRIFICE 139 
 
 wounds, and the knee is such a complicated, 
 delicate marvel! 
 
 Corporal Leglise is in bed now. He breathes 
 with difficulty, and catches his breath now and 
 again like a person who has been sobbing. 
 He looks about him languidly, and hardly 
 seems to have made up his mind to live. He 
 contemplates the bottle of serum, the tubes, 
 the needles, all the apparatus set in motion to 
 revive his fluttering heart, and he seems bowed 
 down by grief. He wants something to drink, 
 but he must not have anything yet; he wants 
 to sleep, but we have to deny sleep to those 
 who need it most; he wants to die perhaps, 
 and we will not let him. 
 
 He sees again the listening post where he 
 spent the night, in advance of all his comrades. 
 He sees again the narrow doorway bordered 
 by sandbags through which he came out at 
 dawn to breathe the cold air and look at the 
 sky from the bottom of the communication- 
 trench. All was quiet, and the early summer 
 morning was sweet even in the depths of the 
 trench. But some one was watching and 
 listening for the faint sound of his footsteps. 
 An invisible hand hurled a bomb. He rushed 
 
140 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 back to the door; but his pack was on his 
 back, and he was caught in the aperture like 
 a rat in a trap. The air was rent by the 
 detonation, and his legs were rent, like the 
 pure air, like the summer morning, like the 
 lovely silence. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The days pass, and once more, the coursing 
 blood begins to make the vessels of the neck 
 throb, to tinge the lips, and give depth and 
 brilliance to the eye. 
 
 Death, which had overrun the whole body 
 like an invader, retired, yielding ground by 
 degrees; but it has halted now, and makes a 
 stand at the legs; these it will not relinquish; 
 it demands something by way of spoil; it will 
 not be baulked of its prey entirely. 
 
 We fight for the portion Death has chosen. 
 The wounded Corporal looks on at our labours 
 and our efforts, like a poor man who has placed 
 his cause in the hands of a knight, and who can 
 only be a spectator of the combat, can only 
 pray and wait. 
 
 * * * 
 
 We shall have to give the monster a share; 
 
THE SACRIFICE 141 
 
 one of the legs must go. Now another struggle 
 begins with the man himself. Several times 
 a slay I go and sit by his bed. All our attempts 
 air conversation break down one by one. We 
 always end in the same silence and anxiety. 
 To-day Leglise said to me: 
 
 "Oh! I know quite well what you're 
 thinking about!" 
 
 As I made no answer, he intreated: 
 
 "Perhaps we could wait a little longer? 
 Perhaps to-morrow I may be better . . . 
 
 Then suddenly, in great confusion: 
 
 "Forgive me. I do trust you all. I know 
 what you do is necessary. But perhaps it 
 will not be too late in two or three days. . . ." 
 
 Two or three days ! We will see to-morrow. 
 
 The nights are terribly hot; I suffer for 
 his sake. 
 
 I come to see him in the evening for the last 
 time, and encourage him to sleep. But his 
 eyes are wide open in the night and I feel 
 that they are anxiously fixed on mine. 
 
 Fever makes his voice tremble. 
 
 "How can I sleep with all the things I am 
 thinking about?" 
 
 Then he adds faintly: 
 
142 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 "Must you? Must you?" 
 The darkness gives me courage, and I nod 
 my head: "Yes!" 
 
 As I finish his dressings, I speak from the 
 depths of my heart: 
 
 "Leglise, we will put you to sleep to-mor- 
 row. We will make an examination without 
 letting you suffer, and we will do what is 
 necessary." 
 
 "I know quite well that you will take it 
 off." 
 
 "We shall do what we must do." 
 
 I divine that the corners of his mouth are 
 drawn down a little, and that his lips are 
 quivering. He thinks aloud: 
 
 "If only the other leg was all right!" 
 
 I have been thinking of that too, but I 
 pretend not to have heard. Sufficient unto 
 the day is the evil thereof. 
 
 I spend part of the afternoon sewing pieces 
 of waterproof stuff together. He asks me: 
 
 "What are you doing?'* 
 
 "I am making you a mask, to give you 
 ether." 
 
THE SACRIFICE 143 
 
 "Thank you; I can't bear the smell of 
 chloroform. " 
 
 I answer "Yes, that's why." The real 
 reason is that we are not sure he could bear 
 the brutal chloroform, in his present state. 
 
 Leglise's leg was taken off at the thigh this 
 morning. He was still unconscious when we 
 carried him into the dark room to examine 
 his other leg under the X-rays. 
 
 He was already beginning to moan and to 
 open his eyes, and the radiographer was not 
 hurrying. I did all I could to hasten the 
 business, and to get him back into his bed. 
 Thus he regained consciousness in bright sun- 
 shine. 
 
 What would he, who once again was so 
 close to the dark kingdom, have thought if he 
 had awakened in a gloom peopled by shadows, 
 full of whisperings, sparks and flashes of light? 
 
 As soon as he could speak, he said to me: 
 
 "You have cut off my leg?" 
 
 I made a sign. His eyes filled, and as his 
 head was low, the great tears trickled on to 
 the pillow. 
 
144 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 To-day he is calmer. The first dressings 
 were very painful. He looked at the raw, 
 bloody, oozing stump, trembling, and said: 
 
 "It looks pretty horrible!" 
 
 We took so many precautions that now he 
 is refreshed for a few hours. 
 
 "They say you are to have the Military 
 Medal," the head doctor told him. 
 
 Leglise confided to me later, with some 
 hesitation : 
 
 "I don't' suppose they would really give me 
 the medal!" 
 
 "And why not?" 
 
 "I was punished; one of my men had some 
 buttons off his overcoat." 
 
 Oh, my friend, scrupulous lad, could I love 
 my countrymen if they could remember those 
 wretched buttons for an instant? 
 
 "My men!" he said gravely. I look at his 
 narrow chest, his thin face, his boyish forehead 
 with the serious furrow on it of one who 
 accepts all responsibilities, and I do not know 
 how to show him my respect and affection. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Leglise's fears were baseless. General G 
 
THE SACRIFICE 145 
 
 arrived just now. I met him on the terrace. 
 His face pleased me. It was refined and in- 
 telligent. 
 
 "I have come to see Corporal Leglise," he 
 said. 
 
 I took him into the ward, full of wounded 
 men, and he at once went towards Leglise 
 unhesitatingly, as if he knew him perfectly. 
 
 "How are you?" he asked, taking the 
 young man's hand. 
 
 "Mon General, they've cut off my leg . . ." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know, my poor fellow. And 
 I have brought you the Military Medal." 
 
 He pinned it on to Leglise's shirt, and 
 kissed my friend on both cheeks, simply and 
 affectionately. 
 
 Then he talked to him again for a few 
 minutes. 
 
 I was greatly pleased. Really, this General 
 is one of the right sort. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The medal has been wrapped in: a bit of 
 muslin, so that the flies may not soil it, and 
 hung on the wall over the bed. It seems to be 
 watching over the wounded man, to be looking 
 on at what is happening. Unfortunately, 
 
146 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 what it sees is sad enough. The right leg, 
 the only leg, is giving us trouble now. The 
 knee is diseased, it is in a very bad state, and 
 all we have done to save it seems to have been 
 in vain. Then a sore has appeared on the 
 back, and then another sore. Every morning, 
 we pass from one misery to another, telling 
 the beads of suffering in due order. 
 
 So a man does not die of pain, or Leglise 
 would certainly be dead. I see him still, 
 opening his eyes desperately and checking the 
 scream that rises to his lips. Oh! I thought 
 indeed that he was going to die. But his 
 agony demands full endurance; it does not 
 even stupefy those it assails. 
 
 I call on every one for help. 
 
 u Genest, Barrassin, Prevot, come, all of 
 you." 
 
 Yes, let ten of us do our best if necessary, 
 to support Leglise, to hold him, to soothe him. 
 A minute of his endurance is equal to ten 
 years of such effort as ours. 
 
 Alas! were there a hundred of us he would 
 still have to bear the heaviest burden alone. 
 
 All humanity at this hour is bearing a very 
 cruel burden. Every minute aggravates its 
 
THE SACRIFICE 147 
 
 sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its 
 
 aid? 
 
 * * * 
 
 We made an examination of the wounded 
 man, together with our chief, who muttered 
 almost inaudibly between his teeth: 
 
 u He must be prepared for another sacrifice." 
 
 Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely con- 
 summated. 
 
 But Leglise understood. He no longer 
 weeps. He has the weary and somewhat 
 bewildered look of the man who is rowing 
 against the storm. I steal a look at him, 
 and he says at once in a clear, calm, resolute 
 voice : 
 
 "I would nuch rather die." 
 
 I go into the garden. It is a brilliant 
 morning, but I can see nothing, I want to see 
 nothing. I repeat as I walk to and fro: 
 
 "He would much rather die." 
 
 And I ask despairingly whether he is not 
 right perhaps. 
 
 All the poplars rustle softly. With one 
 voice, the voice of Summer itself, they say: 
 "No! No! He is not right!" 
 
 A little beetle crosses the path before me. 
 
148 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 I step on it unintentionally, but it flies away 
 in desperate haste. It too has answered in 
 its own way: "No, really, your friend is not 
 right." 
 
 "Tell him he is wrong," sing the swarm of 
 insects that buzz about the lime-tree. 
 
 And even a loud roar from the guns that 
 travels across the landscape seems to say 
 gruffly: "He is wrong! He is wrong!" 
 
 During the evening the chief came back to 
 see Leglise, who said to him with the same 
 mournful gravity: 
 
 "No, I won't, Monsieur, I would rather die." 
 
 We go down into the garden, and the chief 
 says a strange thing to me: 
 
 "Try to convince him. I begin at last to 
 feel ashamed of demanding such a sacrifice 
 from him." 
 
 And I too . . . am I not ashamed? 
 
 I consult the warm, star-decked night; I am 
 quite sure now that he is wrong, but I don't 
 know how to tell him so. What can I offer 
 him in exchange for the thing I am about to 
 ask him? Where shall I find the words that 
 
THE SACRIFICE 149 
 
 induce a man to live? Oh you, all things 
 around me, tell me, repeat to me that it is 
 sweet to live, even with a body so grievously 
 mutilated. 
 
 This morning I extracted a little projectile 
 from one of his wounds. He secretly con- 
 cluded that this would perhaps make the 
 great operation unnecessary, and it hurt me 
 to see his joy. I could not leave him this 
 satisfaction. 
 
 The struggle began again; this time it was 
 desperate. For we have no time to lose. 
 Every hour of delay exhausts our man fur- 
 ther. A few days more, and there will be 
 no choice open to him : only death, after a long 
 ordeal. . . . 
 
 He repeats : 
 
 "I am not afraid, but I would rather die." 
 
 Then I talk to him as if I were the advocate 
 of Life. Who gave me this right? Who gave 
 me eloquence? The things I said were just 
 the right things, and they came so readily 
 that now and then I was afraid of holding out 
 so sure a promise of a life I am not certain 
 I can preserve, of guaranteeing a future that 
 is not in man's hands. 
 
150 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Gradually, I feel his resistance weakening. 
 There is something in Leglise which involun- 
 tarily sides with me and pleads with me. 
 There are moments when he does not know 
 what to say, and formulates trivial objec- 
 tions, just because there are others so much 
 weightier. 
 
 "I live with my mother," he says. "I am 
 twenty years old. What work is there for a 
 cripple? Ought I to live to suffer poverty 
 and misery?" 
 
 "Leglise, all France owes you too much, 
 she would blush not to pay her debt." 
 
 And I promise again, in the name of our 
 country, sure that she will never fall short of 
 what I undertake for her. The whole French 
 nation is behind me at this moment, silently 
 ratifying my promise. 
 
 We are at the edge of the terrace; evening 
 has come. I hold his burning wrist in which 
 the feeble pulse beats with exhausted fury. 
 The night is so beautiful, so beautiful! Rockets 
 rise above the hills, and fall slowly bathing the 
 horizon in silvery rays. The lightning of the 
 guns flashes furtively, like a winking eye. In 
 spite of all this, in spite of war, the night is 
 
THE SACRIFICE 151 
 
 like waters dark and divine. Leglise breathes 
 it in to his wasted breast in long draughts, 
 and says : 
 
 "Oh, I don't know, I don't know! . . . 
 Wait another day, please, please. . . ." 
 
 We waited three whole days, and then 
 Leglise gave in. 
 
 "Well, do what you must. Do what you 
 like." 
 
 On the morning of the operation, he asked 
 to be carried down to the ward by the steps 
 into the park. I went with him, and I saw 
 him looking at all things round him, as if 
 taking them to witness. 
 
 If only, only it is not too late! 
 
 Again he was laid on the table. Again we 
 cut through flesh and bones. The second leg 
 was amputated at the thigh. 
 
 I took him in my arms to lay him on his bed, 
 and he was so light, so light. . . . 
 
 This time when he woke he asked no 
 question. But I saw his hands groping to 
 feel where his body ended. 
 
152 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 A few days have passed since the operation. 
 We have done all it was humanly possible to 
 do, and Leglise comes back to life with a kind 
 of bewilderment. 
 
 "I thought I should have died," he said to 
 me this morning, while I was encouraging him 
 to eat. 
 
 He added: 
 
 "When I went down to the operation-ward, 
 I looked well at everything, and I thought it 
 was for the last time." 
 
 "Look, dear boy. Everything is just the 
 same, just as beautiful as ever." 
 
 "Oh!" he says, going back to his memories, 
 "I had made up my mind to die." 
 
 To make up one's mind to die is to take a 
 certain resolution, in the hope of becoming 
 quieter, calmer, and less unhappy. The man 
 who makes up his mind to die severs a good 
 many ties, and indeed actually dies to some 
 extent. . 
 
 With secret anxiety, I say gently, as if I 
 were asking a question: 
 
 "It is always good to eat, to drink, to 
 breathe, to see the light. . . . 
 
 He does not answer. He is dreaming. 
 
THE SACRIFICE 153 
 
 I spoke too soon. I go away, still anx- 
 ious. 
 
 * * * 
 
 We have some bad moments yet, but the 
 fever gradually abates. I have an impression 
 that Leglise bears his pain more resolutely, 
 like one who has given all he had to give, and 
 fears nothing further. 
 
 When I have finished the dressing, I turned 
 him over on his side, to ease his sore back. 
 He smiled for the first time this morning, 
 saying : 
 
 "I have already gained something by get- 
 ting rid of my legs. I can lie on my side 
 now." 
 
 But he cannot balance himself well; he is 
 afraid of falling. 
 
 Think of him, and you will be afraid with 
 him and for him. 
 
 Sometimes he goes to sleep in broad day- 
 light and dozes for a few minutes. He has 
 shrunk to the size of a child. I lay a piece of 
 gauze over his face, as one does to a child, 
 to keep the flies off. I bring him a little bottle 
 of Eau de Cologne and a fan, they help him 
 to bear the final assaults of the fever. 
 
154 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 He begins to smoke again. We smoke 
 
 together on the terrace, where I have had his 
 
 bed brought. I show him the garden and say: 
 
 "In a few days, I will carry you down into 
 
 the garden.' ' 
 
 * * * 
 
 He is anxious about his neighbours, asks 
 their names, and inquires about their wounds. 
 For each one he has a compassionate word 
 that comes from the depths of his being. He 
 says to me: 
 
 "I hear that little Camus is dead. Poor 
 Camus !" 
 
 His eyes fill with tears. I was almost glad 
 to see them. He had not cried for so long. 
 He adds: 
 
 "Excuse me, I used to see Camus some- 
 times. It's so sad." 
 
 He becomes extraordinarily sensitive. He is 
 touched by all he sees around him, by the 
 sufferings of others, by their individual mis- 
 fortunes. He vibrates like an elect soul, 
 exalted by a great crisis. 
 
 When he speaks of his own case, it is always 
 to make light of his misfortune: 
 
 "Dumont got it in the belly. Ah, it's 
 
THE SACRIFICE 155 
 
 lucky for me that none of my organs are 
 touched; I can't complain." 
 
 I watch him * with admiration, but I am 
 waiting for something more, something 
 more. . . . 
 
 His chief crony is Legrand. 
 
 Legrand is a stonemason with a face like 
 a young girl. He has lost a big piece of his 
 skull. He has also lost the use of language, 
 and we teach him words, as to a baby. He is 
 beginning to get up now, and he hovers round 
 Leglise's bed to perform little services for him. 
 He tries to master his rebellious tongue, but 
 failing in the attempt, he smiles, and expresses 
 himself with a limpid glance, full of intelligence. 
 
 Leglise pities him too: 
 
 "It must be wretched not to be able to 
 speak." 
 
 * :je * 
 
 To-day we laughed, yes, indeed, we laughed 
 heartily, Leglise, the orderlies and I. 
 
 We were talking of his future pension while 
 the dressings were being prepared, and some- 
 one said to him : 
 
 "You will live like a little man of means." 
 
 Leglise looked at his body and answered: 
 
156 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 "Oh, yes, a little man, a very little man." 
 The dressing went off very well. To make 
 our task easier, Leglise suggested that he 
 should hold on to the head of the bed with 
 both hands and throw himself back on his 
 shoulders, holding his stumps up in the air. 
 It was a terrible, an unimaginable sight; but 
 he began to laugh, and the spectacle became 
 comic. We all laughed. But the dressing 
 was easy and was quickly finished. 
 
 The stumps are healing healthily. In the 
 
 afternoon, he sits up in bed. He begins to 
 
 read and to smoke, chatting to his companions. 
 
 I explain to him how he will be able to 
 
 walk with artificial legs. He jokes again: 
 
 "I was rather short before; but now I can 
 be just the height I choose." 
 
 JJC Jjl # 
 
 I bring him some cigarettes that had been 
 sent me for him, some sweets and dainties. 
 He makes a sign that he wants to whisper to 
 me, and says very softly: 
 
 "I have far too many things. But Legrand 
 is very badly off; his home is in the invaded 
 district, and he has nothing, they can't send 
 him anything." 
 
THE SACRIFICE 157 
 
 I understand. I come back presently with 
 a packet in which there are tobacco, some good 
 cigarettes, and also a little note. . . . 
 
 "Here is something for Legrand. You 
 must give it to him. I'm off." 
 
 In the afternoon I find Leglise troubled and 
 perplexed. 
 
 "I can't give all this to Legrand myself, 
 he would be offended." 
 
 So then we have to devise a discreet method 
 of presentation. 
 
 It takes some minutes. He invents romantic 
 possibilities. He becomes flushed, animated, 
 interested. 
 
 "Think," I say, "find a way. Give it to 
 him yourself, from some one or other." 
 
 But Leglise is too much afraid of wounding 
 Legrand's susceptibilities. He ruminates on 
 the matter till evening. 
 
 The little parcel is at the head of Legrand's 
 bed. Leglise calls my attention to it with his 
 chin, and whispers: 
 
 "I found some one to give it to him. He 
 doesn't know who sent it. He has made all 
 sorts of guesses; it is very amusing!" 
 
t 158 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Oh, Leglise, can it be that there is still 
 something amusing, and that it is to be kind? 
 Isn't this alone enough to make it worth 
 while to live ? 
 
 So now we have a great secret between us. 
 All the morning, as I come and go in the ward, 
 he looks at me meaningly, and smiles to him- 
 self. Legrand gravely offers me a cigarette; 
 Leglise finds it hard not to burst out laughing. 
 But he keeps his counsel. 
 
 The orderlies have put him on a neighbour- 
 ing bed while they make his. He stays there 
 very quietly, his bandaged stumps in view, and 
 sings a little song, like a child's cradle-song. 
 Then, all of a sudden, he begins to cry, sobbing 
 aloud. 
 
 I put my arm round him and ask anxiously: 
 "Why? What is the matter?" 
 Then he answers in a broken voice : 
 "I am crying with joy and thankfulness." 
 Oh! I did not expect so much. But I am 
 very happy, much comforted. I kiss him, 
 he kisses me, and I think I cried a little too. 
 
 * * * 
 
 I have wrapped him in a flannel dressing- 
 
THE SACRIFICE 159 
 
 gown, and I carry him in my arms. I go 
 down the steps to the park very carefully, 
 like a mother carrying her new-born babe for 
 the first time, and I call out: "An arm-chair! 
 An arm-chair." 
 
 He clings to my neck as I walk, and says 
 in some confusion: 
 
 "I shall tire you." 
 
 No indeed! I am too well pleased. I would 
 not let any one take my place. The arm- 
 chair has been set under the trees, near a grove. 
 I deposit Leglise among the cushions. They 
 bring him a kepi. He breathes the scent of 
 green things, of the newly mown lawns, of the 
 warm gravel. He looks at the fagade of the 
 mansion, and says: 
 
 "I had not even seen the place where I 
 very nearly died." 
 
 All the wounded who are walking about 
 
 come and visit him; they almost seem to be 
 
 paying him homage. He talks to them with 
 
 a cordial authority. Is he not the chief 
 
 among them, in virtue of his sufferings and 
 
 his sacrifice? 
 
 * * * 
 
 Some one in the ward was talking this 
 
160 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 morning of love and marriage, and a 
 home. 
 
 I glanced at Leglise now and then; he 
 seemed to be dreaming and he murmured: 
 
 "Oh, for me, now . . ." 
 
 Then I told him something I knew: I know 
 young girls who have sworn to marry only a 
 mutilated man. Well, we must believe in the 
 vows of these young girls. France is a country 
 richer in warmth of heart than in any other 
 virtue. It is a blessed duty to give happiness 
 to those who have sacrificed so much. And a 
 thousand hearts, the generous hearts of women, 
 applaud me at this moment. 
 
 Leglise listens, shaking his head. He does 
 not venture to say "No." 
 
 * # # 
 
 Leglise has not only the Military Medal, 
 but also the War Cross. The notice has just 
 come. He reads it with blushes. 
 
 "I shall never dare to show this," he says; 
 "it is a good deal exaggerated." 
 
 He hands me the paper, which states, in 
 substance, that Corporal Leglise behaved with 
 great gallantry under a hail of bombs, and 
 that his left leg has been amputated. 
 
THE SACRIFICE 161 
 
 "I didn't behave with great gallantry," he 
 says; "I was at my post, that's all. As to 
 the bombs, I only got one." 
 
 I reject this point of view summarily. 
 
 "Wasn't it a gallant act to go to that ad- 
 vanced post, so near the enemy, all alone, at 
 the head of all the Frenchmen? Weren't 
 they all behind you, to the very end of the 
 country, right away to the Pyrenees? Did 
 they not all rely on your coolness, your keen 
 sight, your vigilance? You were only hit 
 by one bomb, but I think you might have had 
 several, and still be with us. And besides, 
 the notice, far from being exaggerated, is 
 really insufficient; it says you have lost a 
 leg, whereas you have lost two! It seems to 
 me that this fully compensates for anything 
 excessive with regard to the bombs." 
 
 "That's true!" agrees Leglise, laughing. 
 "But I don't want to be made out a hero." 
 
 "My good lad, people won't ask what you 
 think before they appreciate and honour you. 
 It will be quite enough to look at your body." 
 * * * 
 
 Then we had to part, for the war goes on, 
 and every day there are fresh wounded. 
 
162 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Leglise left us nearly cured. He left with 
 some comrades, and he was not the least 
 lively of the group. 
 
 "I was the most severely wounded man in 
 the train," he wrote to me, not without a 
 certain pride. 
 
 Since then, Leglise has written to me often. 
 His letters breathe a contented calm. I receive 
 them among the vicissitudes of the campaign; 
 on the highways, in wards where other wounded 
 men are moaning, in fields scoured by the 
 gallop of the cannonade. 
 
 And always something beside me murmurs, 
 mutely : 
 
 "You see, you see, he was wrong when he 
 said he would rather die." 
 
 I am convinced of it, and this is why I have 
 told your story. You will forgive me, won't 
 you, Leglise, my friend? 
 
THE THIRD SYMPHONY 
 
 EVERY morning the stretcher-bearers 
 brought Vize-Feldwebel Spat down 
 to the dressing ward, and his ap- 
 pearance always introduced a certain chill in 
 the atmosphere. 
 
 There are some German wounded whom 
 kind treatment, suffering, or some more ob- 
 scure agency move to composition with the 
 enemy, and who receive what we do for them 
 with a certain amount of gratitude. Spat 
 was not one of these. For weeks we had made 
 strenuous efforts to snatch him from death, 
 and then to alleviate his sufferings,' without 
 eliciting the slightest sign of satisfaction from 
 him, or receiving the least word of thanks. 
 
 He could speak a little French, which he 
 utilised strictly for his material wants, to 
 say, for instance, "A little more cotton-wool 
 under the foot, Monsieur," or, "Have I any 
 fever to-day ?" 
 
 Apart from this, he always showed us the 
 same icy face, the same pale, hard eyes, en- 
 163 
 
164. THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYBS 
 framed by colourless lashes. We gathered, 
 from certain indications, that the man was 
 intelligent and well educated; but he was ob- 
 viously under the domination of a lively hatred, 
 and a strict sense of his own dignity. 
 
 He bore pain bravely, and like one who 
 makes it a point of honour to repress the most 
 excusable reactions of the martyred flesh. 
 I do not remember ever hearing him cry out, 
 though this would have seemed to me natural 
 enough, and would by no means have lowered 
 Monsieur Spat in my opinion. All I ever 
 heard from him was a stifled moan, the dull 
 panting of the woodman as he swings his axe. 
 
 One day we were obliged to give him an 
 anaesthetic in order to make incisions in the 
 wounds in his leg; he turned very red and 
 said, in a tone that was almost imploring: 
 "You won't cut it off, gentlemen, will you?'* 
 But no sooner did he regain consciousness than 
 he at once resumed his attitude of stiff hos- 
 tility. 
 
 After a time, I ceased to believe that his 
 features could ever express anything but this 
 repressed animosity. I was undeceived by 
 an unforeseen incident. 
 
THE THIRD SYMPHONY 165 
 
 The habit of whistling between one's teeth 
 is a token, with me as with many other persons, 
 of a certain absorption. It is perhaps rather 
 a vulgar habit, but I often feel impelled to 
 whistle, especially when I have a serious piece 
 of work in hand. 
 
 One morning accordingly, I was finishing 
 Vize-Feldwebel Spat's dressing, and whistling 
 something at random. I was looking at his 
 leg, and was paying no attention to his face, 
 when I suddenly became curiously aware that 
 the look he had fixed upon me had changed in 
 quality, and I raised my eyes. 
 
 Certainly, something very extraordinary 
 had taken place: the German's face glowed 
 with a kind of warmth and contentment, and 
 was so smiling and radiant that I hardly 
 recognised it. I could scarcely believe that 
 he had been able to improvise this face, which 
 was sensitive and trustful, out of the features 
 he generally showed us. 
 
 "Tell me, Monsieur," he murmured, "it's 
 the Third Symphony, isn't it, that you are 
 . . . what do you call it?— yes . . . whistling. 
 
 First, I stopped whistling. Then I an- 
 swered: "Yes, I believe it is the Third 
 
166 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Symphony"; then I remained silent and con- 
 fused. 
 
 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 I 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 cig- 
 arettes 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 
 
 167 
 
168 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 a pariah. It is because of a much sadder and 
 more intimate thing . . . Gregoire lacks en- 
 durance, 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 
 
GRACE 169 
 
 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 Paffin'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 
 W!" 
 
 He preserves a sulky silence, full of reserva- 
 tions. He looks like a condemned criminal 
 awaiting execution. He is so pre-occupied 
 that he does not even answer when the sar- 
 castic Sergeant says as he passes him : 
 
 u Ah! here's our grouser." 
 
 At last he is laid on the table which the 
 wounded men call the "billiard-table." 
 
170 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 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." 
 
 He replies in a voice hoarse with pain and 
 terror: "I can't help it." 
 
 I add, just to say something: "Courage, 
 a little courage." 
 
 He does not even answer, and I feel that to 
 exhort him to show courage, is to recommend 
 an impossible thing, as if I were to advise him 
 to have black eyes instead of his pale blue 
 ones. 
 
 The dressing is completed in an atmosphere 
 
GRACE 171 
 
 of general discomfort. Nothing could per- 
 suade me that Gregoire does not cordially 
 detest me at this moment. While they are 
 carrying him away, I ask myself bitterly why 
 Gregoire is so deficient in grace, why he cannot 
 suffer decently? 
 
 The Sergeant says, as he sponges the table: 
 "He's working against one all the time." 
 Well, the Sergeant is wrong. Gregoire is 
 not deliberately hostile. Sometimes I divine, 
 when he knits his brows, that he is making 
 an effort to resist suffering, to meet it with a 
 stouter and more cheerful heart. But he does 
 not know how to set about it. 
 
 If you were asked to lift a railway-engine, 
 you would perhaps make an effort; but you 
 would do so without confidence and without 
 success. So you must not say hard things of 
 Gregoire. 
 
 Gregoire is unable to bear suffering, just as 
 one is unable to talk an unknown language. 
 And, then, it is easier to learn Chinese than to 
 learn the art of suffering. 
 
 When I say that he is unable to bear suffer- 
 ing, I really mean that he has to suffer a great 
 deal more than others. ... I know the 
 
172 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 human body, and I cannot be deceived as to 
 certain signs. 
 
 Gregoire begins very badly. He reminds 
 one of those children who have such a terror 
 of dogs that they are bound to be bitten. 
 Gregoire trembles at once. The dogs of pain 
 throw themselves upon this defenceless man 
 and pull him down. 
 
 A great load of misery is heavy for a man to 
 bear alone, but it is supportable when he is 
 helped. Unfortunately Gregoire has no 
 friends. He does nothing to obtain them, it 
 almost seems as if he did not want any. 
 
 He is not coarse, noisy and foul-mouthed, 
 like the rascal Groult who amuses the whole 
 ward. He is only dull and reserved. 
 
 He does not often say "Thank you" when 
 he is offered something, and many touchy 
 people take offence at this. 
 
 When I sit down by his bed, he gives no 
 sign of any pleasure at my visit. I ask 
 him: 
 
 u What was your business in civil life?" 
 
 He does not answer immediately. At last 
 
GRACE 173 
 
 he says: "Odd jobs; I carried and loaded 
 here and there." 
 
 "Are you married?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Have you any children?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "How many?" 
 
 "Three." 
 
 The conversation languishes. I get up and 
 say: "Good-bye till to-morrow, Gregoire." 
 
 "Ah! you will hurt me again to-morrow." 
 
 I reassure him, or at least I try to reassure 
 him. Then, that I may not go away leaving 
 a bad impression, I ask: 
 
 "How did you get wounded?" 
 
 "Well, down there in the plain, with the 
 others, . . ." 
 
 That is all. I go away. Gregoire's eyes 
 follow me for a moment, and I cannot even say 
 whether he is pleased or annoyed by my visit. 
 
 Good-bye, poor Gregoire. I cross the ward 
 and go to sit down by Auger. 
 
 Auger is busy writing up his "book." 
 
 It is a big ledger some one has given him, in 
 
174 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 which he notes the important events of his 
 life. 
 
 Auger writes a round schoolboy hand. In 
 fact, he can just write sufficiently well for his 
 needs, I might almost say for his pleasure. 
 
 "Would you care to look at my book?" 
 he says, and he hands it to me with the air of 
 a man who has no secrets. 
 
 Auger receives many letters, and he copies 
 them out carefully, especially when they are 
 fine letters, full of generous sentiments. His 
 lieutenant, for instance, wrote him a remark- 
 able letter. 
 
 He also copies into his book the letters he 
 writes to his wife and his little girl. Then he 
 notes the incidents of the day: "Wound dressed 
 at 10 o'clock. The pus is diminishing. After 
 dinner Madame la Princesse Moreau paid us 
 a visit, and distributed caps all round; I got 
 a fine green one. The little chap who had 
 such a bad wound in the belly died at 2 
 o'clock. . . ." 
 
 Auger closes his book and puts it back under 
 his bolster. 
 
 He has a face that it does one good to look 
 at. His complexion is warm and fresh ; his hair 
 
GRACE 175 
 
 stiff and rather curly. He has a youthful 
 moustache, a well-shaped chin, with a lively 
 dimple in the middle, and eyes which seem to 
 be looking out on a smiling landscape, gay 
 with sunshine and running waters. 
 
 "I am getting on splendidly," he says with 
 great satisfaction. "Would you like to see 
 Mariette?" 
 
 He lifts up the sheet, and I see the apparatus 
 in which we have placed the stump of his leg. 
 It makes a kind of big white doll, which he 
 takes in both hands with a laugh, and to which 
 he has given the playful name of "Mariette." 
 
 Auger was a sapper in the Engineers. A 
 shell broke his thigh and tore off his foot. But 
 as the foot was still hanging by a strip of flesh, 
 Auger took out his pocket-knife, and got rid 
 of it. Then he said to his terror-stricken 
 comrades: "Well, boys, that's all right. It 
 might have been worse. Now carry me some- 
 where out of this." 
 
 "Did you suffer terribly?" I asked him. 
 
 "Well, Monsieur, not as much as you might 
 think. Honestly, it did not hurt so very, very 
 much. Afterwards, indeed, the pain was 
 pretty bad." 
 
176 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 I understand why every one is fond of 
 Auger. It is because he is reassuring. Seeing 
 him and listening to him one opines that suffer- 
 ing is not such a horrible thing after all. Those 
 who live far from the battle-field, and visit 
 hospitals to get a whiff of the war, look at 
 Auger and go away well satisfied with every- 
 thing: current events, him, and themselves. 
 They are persuaded that the country is well 
 defended, that our soldiers are brave, and that 
 wounds and mutilations, though they may be 
 serious things, are not unbearable. 
 
 Yet pain has come to Auger as to the rest. 
 But there is a way of taking it. 
 
 He suffers in an enlightened, intelligent, 
 almost methodical fashion. He does not 
 confuse issues, and complain indiscriminately. 
 Even when in the hands of others, he remains 
 the man who had the courage to cut off his 
 own foot, and finish the work of the shrapnel. 
 He is too modest and respectful to give advice 
 to the surgeon, but he offers him valuable 
 information. 
 
 He says: 
 
GRACE 177 
 
 "Just there you are against the bone, it 
 hurts me very much. Ah! there you can 
 scrape, I don't feel it much. Take care! 
 You're pressing rather too hard. All right: 
 you can go on, I see what it's for. . . ." 
 
 And this is how we work together. 
 
 "What are you doing? Ah, you're washing 
 it. I like that. It does me good. Good 
 blood! Rub a little more just there. You 
 don't know how it itches. Oh! if you're 
 going to put the tube in, you must tell me, 
 that I may hold on tight to the table." 
 
 So the work gets on famously. Auger will 
 make a rapid and excellent recovery. With 
 him, one need never hesitate to do what is 
 necessary. I wanted to give him an anaes- 
 thetic before scraping the bone of his leg. He 
 said: 
 
 "I don't suppose it will be a very terrible 
 business. If you don't mind, don't send me 
 to sleep, but just do what is necessary. I 
 will see to the rest." 
 
 True, he could not help making a few 
 grimaces. Then the Sergeant said to him: 
 
 "Would you like to learn the song of the 
 grunting pigs?" 
 
178 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 "How does your song go?" 
 
 The Sergeant begins in a high, shrill voice : 
 
 Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne 
 On entend les cochons . . . 
 Cela prouve d'une facon certai-ai-ne 
 Qu'ils non pas I'trood du . . . bouche. 
 
 Auger begins to laugh; everybody laughs. 
 And meanwhile we are bending over the 
 wounded leg and our work gets on apace. 
 
 "Now, repeat," says the Sergeant. 
 
 He goes over it again, verse by verse, and 
 Auger accompanies him. 
 
 Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne . . . 
 
 Auger stops now and then to make a slight 
 grimace. Sometimes, too, his voice breaks. 
 He apologises simply: 
 
 "I could never sing in tune." 
 
 Nevertheless, the song is learnt, more or 
 less, and when the General comes to visit the 
 hospital, Auger says to him: 
 
 "Mon General, I can sing you a fine song." 
 
 And he would, the rascal, if the head doctor 
 did not look reprovingly at him. 
 
GRACE 179 
 
 It is very dismal, after this, to attend to 
 Gregoire, and to hear him groaning: 
 
 "Ah! don't pull like that. You're dragging 
 out my heart." 
 
 I point out that if he won't let us attend to 
 him, he will become much worse. Then he 
 begins to cry. 
 
 "What do I care, since I shall die anyhow?" 
 
 He has depressed the orderlies, the stretcher- 
 bearers, everybody. He does not discourage 
 me; but he gives me a great deal of trouble. 
 
 All you gentlemen who meet together to 
 discuss the causes of the war, the end of the 
 war, the using-up of effectives and the future 
 bases of society, excuse me if I do not give you 
 my opinion on these grave questions. I am 
 really too much taken up with the wound of 
 our unhappy Gregoire. 
 
 It is not satisfactory, this wound, and when 
 I look at it, I cannot think of anything else; 
 the screams of the wounded man would pre- 
 vent me from considering the conditions of 
 the decisive battle and the results of the re- 
 arrangement of the map of Europe with suffi- 
 cient detachment. 
 
 Listen : Gregoire tells me he is going to die. 
 
180 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 I think and believe that he is wrong. But he 
 
 certainly will die if I do not take it upon myself 
 
 to make him suffer. He will die, because every 
 
 one is forsaking him. And he has long ago 
 
 forsaken himself. 
 
 * * # 
 
 "My dear chap," remarked Auger to a 
 very prim orderly, "it is no doubt unpleasant 
 to have only one shoe to put on, but it gives 
 one a chance of saving. And now, moreover, I 
 only run half as much risk of scratching my 
 wife with my toe-nails in bed as you do. . . ." 
 
 "Quite so," added the Sergeant; "with 
 Mariette he will caress his good lady, so to 
 speak." 
 
 Auger and the Sergeant crack jokes like 
 two old cronies. The embarrassed orderly, 
 failing to find a retort, goes away laughing con- 
 strainedly. 
 
 I sat down by Auger, and we were left alone. 
 
 "I am a basket-maker," he said gravely. I 
 shall be able to take up my trade again more 
 or less. But think of workers on the land, like 
 Groult, who has lost a hand, and Lerondeau, 
 with his useless leg! . . . That's really ter- 
 rible !" 
 
GRACE 181 
 
 Auger rolls his r's in a way that gives 
 piquancy and vigour to his conversation. He 
 talks of others with a natural magnanimity 
 which comes from the heart, like the expression 
 of his eyes, and rings true, like the sound of his 
 voice. And then again, he really need not 
 envy any one. Have I not said it! He is a 
 prince. 
 
 "I have had some very grand visitors," he 
 says. "Look, another lady came a little while 
 ago, and left me this big box of sweets. Do 
 take one, Monsieur, it would be a pleasure to 
 me. And please, will you hand them round 
 to the others, from me?" 
 
 He adds in a lower tone: 
 
 "Look under my bed. I put everything I 
 am given there. Really, there's too much. 
 I'm ashamed. There are some chaps here 
 who never get anything, and they were brave 
 fellows who did their duty just as well as I 
 did." 
 
 It is true, there are many brave soldiers in 
 the ward, but only one Military Medal was 
 given among them, and it came to Auger. 
 Its arrival was the occasion of a regular little 
 fete; his comrades all took part in it cor- 
 
182 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 dially, for strange to say, no one is jealous of 
 Auger. A miracle indeed! Did you ever 
 hear of any other prince of whom no one was 
 jealous? 
 
 "Are you going?" said Auger. "Please 
 just say a few words to Groult. He is a bit 
 of a grouser, but he likes a talk." 
 * * * 
 
 Auger has given me a lesson. I will go and 
 smoke a cigarette with Groult, and above all, 
 I will go and see Gregoire. 
 
 Groult, indeed, is not altogether neglected. 
 He is an original, a perverse fellow. He is 
 pointed out as a curious animal. He gets his 
 share of presents and attention. 
 
 But no one knows anything about Gregoire; 
 he lies staring at the wall, and growing thinner 
 every day, and Death seems the only person 
 who is interested in him. 
 
 You shall not die, Gregoire ! I vow to keep 
 hold of you, to suffer with you, and to endure 
 your ill-temper humbly. You, who seem to be 
 bearing the misery of an entire world, shall not 
 be miserable all alone. 
 
 Kind ladies who come to see our wounded 
 and give them picture-books, tri-coloured 
 
GRACE 183 
 
 caps and sweetmeats, do not forget Gregoire, 
 who is wretched. Above all, give him your 
 sweetest smiles. 
 
 You go away well pleased with yourselves 
 because you have been generous to Auger. 
 But there is no merit in being kind to Auger. 
 With a single story, a single clasp of his hand, 
 he gives you much more than he received from 
 you. He gives you confidence; he restores 
 your peace of mind. 
 
 Go and see Gregoire who has nothing but his 
 suffering to give, and who very nearly gave 
 his life. 
 
 If you go away without a smile for Gregoire, 
 you may fear that you have not fulfilled your 
 task. And don't expect him to return your 
 smile, for where would your liberality be in 
 that case? 
 
 It is easy to pity Auger, who needs no pity. 
 It is difficult to pity Gregoire, and yet he is so 
 pitiable. 
 
 Do not forget; Auger is touched with grace; 
 but Gregoire will be damned if you do not hold 
 out your hand to him. 
 
 God Himself, who has withheld grace from 
 the damned, must feel pity for them. 
 
184 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 It is a very artless desire for equality which 
 makes us say that all men are equal in the 
 presence of suffering. No! no! they are not. 
 And as we know nothing of Death but that 
 which precedes and determines it, men are not 
 even equal in the presence of Death. 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 
 
 ONE more glance into the dark ward, 
 in which something begins to reign 
 which is not sleep, but merely a kind 
 of nocturnal stupor. 
 
 The billiard-table has been pushed into a 
 corner; it is loaded with an incoherent mass 
 of linen, bottles, and articles of furniture. A 
 smell of soup and excrements circulates be- 
 tween the stretchers, and seems to insult the 
 slender onyx vases that surmount the cab- 
 inet. 
 
 And now, quickly! quickly! Let us escape 
 on tiptoe into the open air. 
 
 The night is clear and cold, without a breath 
 of wind: a vast block of transparent ice 
 between the snow and the stars. Will it 
 suffice to cleanse throat and lungs, nauseated 
 by the close effluvium of suppurating wounds? 
 
 The snow clings and balls under our sabots. 
 How good it would be to have a game. . . . 
 185 
 
186 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 But we are overwhelmed by a fatigue that 
 has become a kind of exasperation. We will 
 go to the end of the lawn. 
 
 Here is the great trench in which the refuse 
 of the dressing-ward, all the residuum of 
 infection, steams and rots. Further on we 
 come to the musical pines, which Dalcour the 
 miner visits every night, lantern in hand, 
 to catch sparrows, Dalcour, the formidable 
 Zouave, whom no one can persuade not to 
 carry about his stiff leg and the gaping wound 
 in his bandaged skull in the rain. 
 
 Let us go as far as the wall of the graveyard, 
 which time has caused to swell like a protu- 
 berance on the side of the park, and which is 
 so providentially close at hand. 
 
 The old Chateau looms, a stately mass, 
 through the shadows. To-night, lamps are 
 gleaming softly in every window. It looks 
 like a silent, illuminated ship, the prow of 
 which is cutting through an ice-bank. Noth- 
 ing emerges from it but this quiet light. Noth- 
 ing reveals the nature of its terrible freight. 
 
 We know that in every room, in every 
 storey, on the level of every floor, young 
 mutilated bodies are ranged side by side. A 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 187 
 
 hundred hearts send the over-heated blood in 
 swift pulsations towards the suffering limbs. 
 Through all these bodies the projectile in its 
 furious course made its way, crushing deli- 
 cate mechanisms, rending the precious organs 
 which make us take pleasure in walking, breath- 
 ing, drinking. . . . 
 
 Up there, this innocent joy of order no 
 longer exists; and in order to recapture it, a 
 hundred bodies are performing labours so 
 slow and hard that they call forth tears and 
 sighs from the strongest. 
 
 But how the murmurs of this centre of 
 suffering are muffled by the walls! How si- 
 lently and darkly it broods in space! 
 
 Like a dressing on a large inflamed wound, 
 the Chateau covers its contents closely, and one 
 sees nothing but these lamps, just such lamps 
 as might illuminate a studious solitude, or a 
 conversation between intimate friends at eve- 
 ning, or a love lost in self-contemplation. 
 
 We are now walking through thickets of 
 spindle-wood, resplendent under the snow, and 
 the indifference of these living things to the 
 monstrous misery round them makes the 
 impotent soul that is strangling me seem 
 
188 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 odious and even ridiculous to me. In spite 
 of all protestations of sympathy, the mortal 
 must always suffer alone in his flesh, and this 
 indeed is why war is possible. . . . 
 
 Philippe here thinks perhaps as I do; but 
 he and I have these thoughts thrust on us in the 
 same pressing fashion. Men who are sleeping 
 twenty paces from this spot would be wakened 
 by a cry; yet they are undisturbed by this for- 
 midable presence, inarticulate as a mollusc in 
 the depths of the sea. 
 
 In despair, I stamp on the soft snow with 
 my sabot. The winter grass it covers subsists 
 obstinately, and has no solidarity with any- 
 thing else on earth. Let the pain of man 
 wear itself out; the grass will not wither. 
 Sleep, good folks of the whole world. Those 
 who suffer here will not disturb your rest. 
 
 And suddenly, beyond the woods a rocket 
 rises and bursts against the sky, brilliant as a 
 meteor. It means something most certainly, 
 and it warns some one; but its coarse in- 
 genuity does not deceive me. No barbarous 
 signal such as this could give me back con- 
 fidence in my soul to-night. 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 189 
 
 II 
 
 The little room adjoining the closet where 
 I sleep has been set apart for those whose 
 cries or effluvia make them intolerable to the 
 rest. As it is small and encumbered, it will 
 only admit a single stretcher, and men are 
 brought in there to die in turn. 
 
 But lately, when the Chateau was reigning 
 gracefully in the midst of verdure, the centre 
 of the great star of alleys piercing its groves 
 of limes and beeches, its owners occasionally 
 entertained a brilliant society; and if they 
 had under their roof some gay and lovely milk- 
 white maiden, they gave her this little room at 
 the summit of the right wing, whence the sun 
 may be seen rising above the forests, to dream, 
 and sleep, and adorn herself in. 
 ■ To-day, the fagade of the Chateau seems to 
 be listening, strained and anxious, to the 
 cannonade; and the little room has become a 
 death-chamber. 
 
 Madelan was the first we put there. He 
 was raving in such a brutal and disturbing 
 manner, in spite of the immobility of his long, 
 
190 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 paralysed limbs, that his companions implored 
 us to remove him. I think Madelan neither 
 understood nor noticed this isolation, for he 
 was already given over to a deeper solitude; 
 but his incessant vociferation, after he was 
 deprived of listeners, took on a strange and 
 terrible character. 
 
 For four days and four nights, he never 
 ceased talking vehemently; and listening to 
 him, one began to think that all the life of the 
 big body that was already dead, had fled in 
 frenzy to his throat. For four nights I heard 
 him shouting incoherent, elusive things, which 
 seemed to be replies to some mysterious in- 
 terlocutor. 
 
 At dawn, and from hour to hour throughout 
 the day, I went to see him where he sprawled 
 on a paillasse on the floor, like some red-haired 
 stricken beast, with out-stretched limbs, con- 
 vulsed by spasms which displaced the dirty 
 blanket that covered him. 
 
 He lost flesh with such incredible rapidity 
 that he seemed to be evaporating through 
 the gaping wound in the nape of his neck. 
 
 Then I would speak to him, saying things 
 that were, kindly meant but futile, because 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 191 
 
 conversation is impossible between a man who 
 is being whirled along by the waters of a 
 torrent, and one who is seated among the 
 rushes on the bank. Madelan did not listen 
 to me, and he continued his strange colloquy 
 with the other. He did not want us or any 
 one else; he had ceased to eat or to drink, 
 and relieved himself as he lay, asking neither 
 help nor tendance. 
 
 One day, the wind blew the door of the room 
 to, and there was no key to open it. A long 
 ladder was put up to the window, and a pane 
 of glass was broken to effect an entrance. 
 Directly this was done, Madelan was heard, 
 continuing his dream aloud. 
 
 He died, and was at once replaced by the 
 man with his skull battered in, of whom we 
 knew nothing, because when he came to us 
 he could neither see nor speak, and had 
 nothing by way of history but a red and 
 white ticket, as large as the palm of a child's 
 hand. 
 
 This man spent only one night in the room, 
 filling the silence with painful eructations, and 
 thumping on the partition which separated 
 him from my bed. 
 
192 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 Listening alertly, with the cold air from the 
 open window blowing on my face, I heard in 
 turn the crowing of the cocks in the village, 
 the irregular breathing of Philippe, sleeping 
 the sleep of exhaustion not far from me, and 
 the blows and the death-rattle of the man who 
 took so long to die. He became silent, how- 
 ever, in the morning, when the wind began to 
 drop, and the first detonation of the day 
 boomed through the vault-like quiet of the 
 darkness. 
 
 Then we had as our neighbour the hospital 
 orderly, Sergeant Gidel, who was nearing his 
 end, and whose cruel hiccough we had been 
 unable to alleviate for a week past. This man 
 knew his business, he knew the meaning of 
 probe, of fever, of hardened abdomen. He 
 knew too that he had a bullet in the spinal 
 cord. He never asked us for anything, and 
 as we dared not tell him lies, we were overcome 
 by a kind of shame in his presence. He 
 stayed barely two days in the room, looking 
 with dim eyes at the engravings on the walls, 
 and the Empire bureau on which vases were 
 piled. 
 
 But what need is there to tell of all those 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 193 
 
 whom this unhappy room swallowed up and 
 ejected? 
 
 Ill 
 
 We have no lights this evening. . . . We 
 must learn to do without them. ... I grope 
 my way along the passages, where the wind is 
 muttering, to the great staircase. Here there 
 is a fitful lamp which makes one prefer the 
 darkness. I see the steps, which are white 
 and smeared with mud, pictures and tapestries, 
 a sumptuous scheme of decoration flooded at 
 the bottom by filth and desolation. As I 
 approach the room where the wounded are 
 lying, I hear the calm sound of their conversa- 
 tion. I go in quietly. They cease talking; 
 then they begin to chat again, for now they 
 know me. 
 
 At first one can only distinguish long forms 
 ranged upon the ground. The stretchers seem 
 to be holding forth with human voices. One 
 of these is narrating: 
 
 "We were all three sitting side by side . . . 
 though I had told the adjutant that corner 
 was not a good place. . . . They had just 
 brought us a ration of soup with a little bit of 
 
194 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 meat that was all covered with white frost. 
 Then bullets began to arrive by the dozen, and 
 we avoided them as well as we could, and 
 the earth flew about, and we were laughing, 
 because we had an idea that among all those 
 bullets there was not one that would find its 
 billet. And then they stopped firing, and we 
 came back to sit on the ledge. There were 
 Chagniol and Due and I, and I had them both 
 to the right of me. We began to talk about 
 Giromagny, and about Danjoutin, because 
 that's the district we all came from, and this 
 went on for about half an hour. And then, 
 all of a sudden, a bullet came, just a single one, 
 but this time it was a good one. It went 
 through Chagniol's head, then through Due's, 
 and as I was a little taller than they, it only 
 passed through my neck. . . ." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "Then it went off to the devil! Chagniol 
 fell forward on his face. Due got up, and ran 
 along on all fours as far as the bend in the 
 trench, and there he began to scratch out the 
 earth like a rabbit, and then he died. The 
 blood was pouring down me right and left, 
 and I thought it was time for me to go. I set 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 195 
 
 off running, holding a finger to each side of 
 my neck, because of the blood. I was think- 
 ing: just a single bullet! It's too much! 
 It was really a mighty good one! And then 
 I saw the adjutant. So I said to him: 'I 
 warned you, mon adjutant, that that corner 
 was not a good place!' But the blood rushed 
 up into my mouth, and I began to run again." 
 
 There was a silence, and I heard a voice 
 murmur with conviction: 
 
 "You were jolly lucky, weren't you?" 
 
 Mulet, too, tells his story: 
 
 "They had taken our fire . . . 'That's not 
 your fire,' I said to him. 'Not our fire?' he 
 said. Then the other came up and he said: 
 'Hold your jaw about the fire . . .' 'It's not 
 yours,' I said. Then he said: 'You don't know 
 who you're talking to.' And he turned his 
 cap, which had been inside out . . . 'Ah ! I 
 beg your pardon,' I said, 'but I could not 
 tell . . .' And so they kept our fire. . . ." 
 
 Maville remarks calmly: "Yes, things like 
 that will happen sometimes." 
 
 Silence again. The tempest shakes the 
 windows with a furious hand. The room is 
 faintly illuminated by a candle which has St. 
 
196 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 Vitus' dance. Rousselot, our little orderly, 
 knits away industriously in the circle of light. 
 I smoke a pipe at once acrid and consoling, 
 like this minute itself in the midst of the 
 infernal adventure. 
 
 Before going away, I think of Croquelet, 
 the silent, whose long silhouette I see at the 
 end of the room. "He sleeps all the time," 
 says Mulet, "he sleeps all day." I approach 
 the stretcher, I bend over it, and I see two 
 large open eyes, which look at me gravely and 
 steadily in the gloom. And this look is so 
 sad, so poignant, that I am filled with im- 
 potent distress. 
 
 "You sleep too much, my poor Croquelet." 
 He answers me with his rugged accent, but 
 in a feeble voice: 
 
 "Don't listen to him; it's not true. You 
 know quite well that I can't sleep, and that 
 you won't give me a draught to let me get a 
 real nap. This afternoon, I read a little. . . . 
 But it wasn't very interesting. ... If I could 
 have another book. . . ." 
 
 "Show me your book, Croquelet." 
 He thrusts out his chin towards a little tract. 
 I strike a match, and I read on the grey 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 1971 
 
 cover: "Of the Quality of Prayers addressed 
 to God." 
 
 "All right, Croquelet, I'll try to get you a 
 book with pictures in it. How do you feel 
 this evening?" 
 
 "Ah! bad! very bad! They're thawing 
 now. . . ." 
 
 He has had frost-bite in his feet, and is be- 
 ginning to suffer so much from them that he 
 forgets the wound in his side, which is mortal, 
 but less active. 
 
 IV 
 
 I have come to take refuge among my 
 wounded to smoke in peace, and meditate in 
 the shadow. Here, the moral atmosphere is 
 pure. These men are so wretched, so utterly 
 humiliated, so absorbed in their relentless suf- 
 ferings that they seem to have relinquished 
 the burden of the passions in order to con- 
 centrate their powers on the one endeavour: 
 to live. 
 
 In spite of their solidarity they are for the 
 time isolated by their individual sufferings. 
 Later on, they will communicate; but this is 
 the moment when each one contemplates his 
 
198 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 own anguish, and fights his own battle, with 
 cries of pain. . . . 
 
 They are all my friends. I will stay among 
 them, associating myself with all my soul in 
 their ordeal. 
 
 Perhaps here I shall find peace. Perhaps 
 all ignoble discord will call a truce on the 
 threshold of this empire. 
 
 But a short distance from us the battle-field 
 has thundered unceasingly for days. Like a 
 noisy, complicated mechanism which turns out 
 the products of its internal activity, the stu- 
 pid machine of war throws out, from min- 
 ute to minute, bleeding men. We pick them 
 up, and here they are, swathed in bandages. 
 They have been crushed in the twinkling 
 of an eye; and now we shall have to ask 
 months and years to repair or palliate the 
 damage. 
 
 How silent they are this evening! And 
 how it makes one's heart ache to look at them ! 
 Here is Bourreau, with the brutal name and 
 the gentle nature, who never utters a complaint, 
 and whom a single bullet has deprived of 
 sight for ever. Here is Bride, whom we fear 
 to touch, so covered is he with bandages, but 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 199 
 
 who looks at us with touching, liquid eyes, 
 his mind already wandering. Here is Lerouet, 
 who will not see next morning dawn over the 
 pine-trees, and who has a gangrened wound 
 near his heart. And the others, all of whom I 
 know by their individual misfortunes. 
 
 How difficult it is to realise what they were, 
 all these men who a year ago, were walking 
 in streets, tilling the land, or writing in an 
 office. Their present is too poignant. Here 
 they lie on the ground, like some fair work of 
 art defaced. Behold them! The creature 
 par excellence has received a great outrage, 
 an outrage it has wrought upon itself. 
 
 We are ignorant of their past. But have 
 they a future? I consider these innocent 
 victims in the tragic majesty of the hour, and 
 I feel ashamed of living and breathing freely 
 among them. 
 
 Poor, poor brothers! What could one do 
 for you which would not be insufficient, un- 
 worthy, mediocre? We can at least give up 
 everything and devote ourselves heart and 
 soul to our holy and exacting work. 
 
 But no ! round the beds on which your 
 solitary drama is enacted, men are still taking 
 
200 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 part in a sinister comedy. Every kind of 
 folly, the most ignoble and also the most 
 imbecile passions, pursue their enterprises and 
 their satisfactions over your heads. 
 
 Neither the four corpses we buried this 
 morning, nor your daily agonies will disarm 
 these appetites, suspend these calculations, and 
 destroy these ambitions the development and 
 fruition of which even your martyrdom may 
 be made to serve. 
 
 I will spend the whole evening among my 
 wounded, and we will talk together, gently, 
 of their misery; it will please them, and they 
 will make me forget the horrible atmosphere 
 of discussion that reigns here. 
 
 Alas! during the outburst of the great ca- 
 tastrophe, seeing the volume of blood and 
 fire, listening to the uproar, smelling the 
 stench of the vast gangrene, we thought that 
 all passions would be laid aside, like cumber- 
 some weapons, and that we should give our- 
 selves up with clean hearts and empty hands 
 to battle against the fiery nightmare. He who 
 fights and defends himself needs a pure heart: 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 201 
 
 so does he who wanders among charnel 
 houses, gives drink to parched lips, washes 
 fevered faces and bathes wounds. We 
 thought there would be a great forgetfulness 
 of self and of former hopes, and of the whole 
 world. O Union of pure hearts to meet the 
 ordeal ! 
 
 But no! The first explosion was tre- 
 mendous, yet hardly had its echoes died away 
 when the rag-pickers were already at work 
 among the ruins, in quest of cutlet-bones and 
 waste paper. 
 
 And yet, think of the sacred anguish of 
 those first hours! 
 
 Well, so be it! For my part, I will stay 
 here, between these stretchers with their bur- 
 dens of anguish. 
 
 At this hour one is inclined to distrust 
 everything, man and the universe, and the 
 future of Right. But we cannot have any 
 doubts as to the suffering of man. It is the 
 one certain thing at this moment. 
 
 So I will stay and drink in this sinister 
 testimony. And each time that Beal, who 
 
202 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 has a gaping wound in the stomach, holds out 
 his hands to me with a little smile, I will get 
 up and hold his hands in mine, for he is 
 feverish, and he knows that my hands are 
 always icy. 
 
 Bride is dead. We had been working all 
 day, and in the evening we had to find time to 
 go and bury Bride. 
 
 It is not a very long ceremony. The 
 burial-ground is near. About a dozen of us 
 follow the lantern, slipping in the mud, and 
 stumbling over the graves. Here we are at 
 the wall, and here is the long ditch, always 
 open, which every day is prolonged a little to 
 the right, and filled in a little to the left. Here 
 is the line of white crosses, and the flickering 
 shadows on the wall caused by the lantern. 
 
 The men arrange the planks, slip the ropes, 
 and lower the body, disputing in undertones, 
 for it is not so easy as one might think to be 
 a grave-digger. One must have the knack of 
 it. And the night is very dark and the mud 
 very sticky. 
 
 At last the body is at the bottom of the 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 203 
 
 trench, and the muddy ropes are withdrawn. 
 The little consumptive priest who stands at 
 the graveside murmurs the prayer for the 
 dead. The rain beats in our faces. The 
 familiar demon of Artois, the wind, leaps 
 among the ancient trees. The little priest 
 murmurs the terrible words: Dies irae f dies 
 ilia. . . . 
 
 And this present day is surely the day of 
 wrath ... I too utter my prayer: "In the 
 name of the unhappy world, Bride, I remit all 
 thy sins, I absolve thee from all thy faults! 
 Let this day, at least, be a day of rest." 
 
 The little priest stands bare-headed in the 
 blast. An orderly who is an ecclesiastic holds 
 the end of an apron over his head. A man 
 raises the lantern to the level of his eye. And 
 the rain-drops gleam and sparkle furtively. 
 
 Bride is dead. . . . 
 
 Now we meet again in the little room where 
 friendship reigns. 
 
 Pierre and Jacques, gallant fellows, I shall 
 not forget your beautiful, painful smile at the 
 moment which brings discouragement to the 
 experienced man. I shall not forget. 
 
 The beef and rice, which one needs to be 
 
204 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 very hungry to swallow, is distributed. And a 
 gentle cheerfulness blossoms in the circle of 
 lamplight, a cheerfulness which tries to catch 
 something of the gaiety of the past. Man has 
 such a deep-seated need of joy that he im- 
 provises it everywhere, even in the heart of 
 misery. 
 
 And suddenly, through the steam of the 
 soup, I see Bride's look distinctly. 
 
 It was no ordinary look. The extremity of 
 suffering, the approach of death, perhaps, and 
 also the hidden riches of his soul, gave it 
 extraordinary light, sweetness, and gentleness. 
 When one came to his bedside, and bent over 
 him, the look was there, a well-spring of re- 
 freshment. 
 
 But Bride is dead: we saw his eyes trans- 
 formed into dull, meaningless membranes. 
 
 Where is that well-spring? Can it be 
 quenched? 
 
 Bride is dead. Involuntarily, I repeat 
 aloud: "Bride is dead." 
 
 Have I roused a responsive echo in these 
 sympathetic souls? A religious silence falls 
 upon them. The oldest of all problems comes 
 and takes its place at the table like a familiar 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 205 
 
 guest. It breathes mysteriously into every 
 ear: "Where is Bride? Where is Bride's 
 look?" 
 
 VI 
 
 A lantern advances, swinging among the 
 pines. Who is coming to meet us? 
 
 Philippe recognises the figure of Monsieur 
 Julien. Here is the man, indeed, with his 
 porter's livery, and his base air as of an 
 insolent slave. He waves a stable-lantern 
 which throws grotesque shadows upwards on 
 his face; and he is obviously furious at having 
 been forced to render a service. 
 
 He brandishes the lantern angrily, and 
 thrusts out his chin to show us the advancing 
 figures: two men are carrying a stretcher on 
 which lies a big body wrapped in a coarse 
 winding sheet. The two men are weary, and 
 set the stretcher down carefully in the mud. 
 
 "IsitFumat?" 
 
 u Yes. He has just died, very peacefully." 
 
 "Where are you going?" 
 
 "There is no place anywhere for a corpse. 
 So we are taking him to the chapel in the 
 burial-ground. But he is heavy." 
 
206 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 "We will give you a hand." 
 
 Philippe and I take hold of the stretcher. 
 The men follow us in silence. The body is 
 heavy, very heavy. We drag our sabots out 
 of the clay laboriously. And we walk slowly, 
 breathing hard. 
 
 How heavy he is! . . . He was called 
 Fumat . . . He was a giant. He came from 
 the mountains of the Centre, leaving a red- 
 tiled village on a hill-side, among juniper- 
 bushes and volcanic boulders. He left his 
 native place with its violet peaks and strong 
 aromatic scents and came to the war in Artois. 
 He was past the age when men can march to 
 the attack, but he guarded the trenches and 
 cooked. He received his death-wound while 
 he was cooking. The giant of Auvergne was 
 peppered with small missiles. He had no 
 wound at all proportionate to his huge body. 
 Nothing but splinters of metal. Once again, 
 David has slain Goliath. 
 
 He was two days dying. He was asked: 
 "Is there anything you would like?" And 
 he answered with white lips: "Nothing, 
 thank you." When we were anxious and 
 asked him "How do you feel?" he was 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 207 
 
 always quite satisfied. "I am getting on very 
 well." He died with a discretion, a modesty, 
 a self-forgetf ulness which redeemed the ego- 
 tism of the universe. 
 
 How heavy he is! He was wounded as he 
 was blowing up the fire for the soup. He did 
 not die fighting. He uttered no historic word. 
 He fell at his post as a cook. . . . He was 
 not a hero. 
 
 You are not a hero, Fumat. You are only a 
 martyr. And we are going to lay you in the 
 earth of France, which has engulfed a noble 
 and innumerable army of martyrs. 
 
 The shadow of the trees sweeps like a huge 
 sickle across space. An acrid smell of cold 
 decay rises on the night. The wind wails its 
 threnody for Fumat. 
 
 "Open the door, Monsieur Julien." 
 
 The lout pushes the door, grumbling to 
 himself. We lay the body on the pavement of 
 the chapel. 
 
 Renaud covers the corpse carefully with a 
 faded flag. And suddenly, as if to celebrate 
 the moment, the brutal roar of guns comes to 
 us from the depths of the woods, breaks 
 violently into the chapel, seizes and rattles 
 
208 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 the trembling window-panes. A hundred 
 times over, a whole nation of cannon yells in 
 honour of Fumat. And each time other 
 Fumats fall in the mud yonder, in their 
 appointed places. 
 
 VII 
 
 They ought not to have cut off all the light 
 in this manner, and it would not have been 
 done, perhaps, if . . . 
 
 There is a kind of mania for organisation 
 which is the sworn enemy of order; in its 
 efforts to discover the best place for every- 
 thing, it ends by diverting everything from its 
 right function and locality, and making every- 
 thing as inopportune as itself. It was a 
 mistake to cut off all the lights this evening, 
 on some pretext or the other. The rooms of 
 the old mansion are not packed with bales 
 of cotton, but with men who have anxious 
 minds and tortured bodies. 
 
 A mournful darkness suddenly; reigned; 
 and outside, the incessant storm that rages in 
 this country swept along like a river in spate. 
 
 Little Rochet was dreaming in the liquid 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 209 
 
 light of the lamp, with hands crossed on his 
 breast, and the delicate profile of an exhausted 
 saint. 
 
 He was dreaming of vague and exquisite 
 things, for cruel fever has moments of gene- 
 rosity between two nightmares. He was 
 dreaming so sweetly that he forgot the abomin- 
 able stench of his body, and that a smile 
 touched the two deep wrinkles at the corners 
 of his mouth, set there by a week of agony. 
 
 But all the lamps have been put out, 
 and the noise of the hurricane has become 
 more insistent, and the wounded have ceased 
 talking, for darkness discourages conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 There are some places where the men with 
 whom the shells have dealt mercifully and 
 whose wounds are only scratches congregate. 
 These have only the honour of wounds, and 
 what may be called their delights. . . . But 
 here, we have only the worst cases; and here 
 they have to await the supreme decision of 
 death. 
 
 Little Rochet awoke to a reality full of 
 darkness and despair. He heard nothing but 
 laboured breathing round him, and rising 
 
210 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 above it all, the violent breath of the storm. 
 He was suddenly conscious of his lacerated 
 stomach, of his lost leg, and he realised that 
 the fetid smell in the air was the smell of his 
 flesh. And he thought of the loving letter he 
 had received in the morning from his four big 
 sisters with glossy hair, he thought of all his 
 lost, ravished happiness. . . . 
 
 Renaud hurries up, groping his way among 
 the dark ambushes of the corridor. 
 
 "Come, come quickly. Little Rochet has 
 thrown himself out of bed." 
 
 Holding up a candle, I take in the melan- 
 choly scene. We have to get Rochet into bed 
 again, readjust his bandages, wipe up the 
 fetid liquid spilt on the floor. 
 
 Rochet's lips are compressed. I stoop to 
 his ear and ask softly: 
 
 "Why did you do this?" 
 
 His face remains calm, and he answers 
 gently, looking me full in the eyes: "I want 
 to die." 
 
 I leave the room, disarmed, my head bowed, 
 and go in search of Monet, who is a priest and 
 an excellent orderly. He is smoking a pipe 
 in a corner. He has just had news that his 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 211 
 
 young brother has been killed in action, and 
 he had snatched a few minutes of solitude. 
 
 "Monet," I say, "I think Rochet is a be- 
 liever. Well, go to him. He may want you." 
 
 Monet puts away his pipe, and goes off 
 noiselessly. 
 
 As to me, I go and wander about outside. 
 On the poplar-lined road, in company with the 
 furious rain and the darkness, I shall perhaps 
 be able to master the flood of bitterness that 
 sweeps over me. 
 
 At the end of an hour, my anxiety brings me 
 back to Rochet's bedside. The candle is 
 burning away with a steady flame. Monet is 
 reading in a little book with a clasp. The 
 profile of the wounded man has still the pitiful 
 austerity of a tortured saint. 
 
 "Is he quieter now?" 
 
 Monet lifts his fine dark eyes to my face, 
 and drops his book. 
 
 "Yes. He is dead." 
 
 VIII 
 
 Why has Hell been painted as a place of 
 hopeless torture and eternal lamentation? 
 
212 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 I believe that even in the lowest depths of 
 Hell, the damned sing, jest, and play cards. 
 I am led to imagine this after seeing these men 
 rowing in their galleys, chained to them by 
 fever and wounds. 
 
 Blaireau, who has only lost a hand, preludes 
 in an undertone: 
 
 Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur. . . . 
 
 This timid breath kindles the dormant 
 flame. Houdebine, who has a fractured 
 knee, but who now expects to be fairly 
 comfortable till the morning, at once responds 
 and continues: 
 
 Marguerite! Marguerite! 
 
 The two sing in unison, with delighted 
 smiles : 
 
 Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur 
 Marguerite! Marguerite! 
 
 Maville joins in at the second verse, and 
 even Legras, whose two legs are broken, and 
 the Chasseur Alpin, who has a hole in his 
 skull. 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 213 
 
 Panchat, the man who had a bullet through 
 his neck, beats time with his finger, because 
 he is forbidden to speak. 
 
 All this goes on in low tones; but faces 
 light up, and flush, as if a bottle of brandy had 
 been passed round. 
 
 Then Houdebine turns to Panchat and 
 says: "Will you have a game of dummy 
 manilla, Panchat?" 
 
 Dummy manilla is a game for two ; and they 
 have to be content with games for two, 
 because no one in this ward can get up, and 
 communication is only easy for those in 
 adjacent beds. 
 
 Panchat makes a sign of consent. Why 
 should he not play dummy manilla, which is a 
 silent game. A chair is put between the two 
 beds, and he shuffles the cards. 
 
 The cards are so worn at the corners that 
 they have almost become ovals. The court 
 cards smile through a fog of dirt; and to 
 deal, one has to wet one's thumb copiously, 
 because a thick, tenacious grease makes 
 the cards stick together in an evil-smelling 
 mass. 
 
 But a good deal of amusement is still to be 
 
214 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 got out of these precious bits of old paste- 
 board. 
 
 Panchat supports himself on his elbow, 
 Houdebine has to keep on his back, be- 
 cause of his knee. He holds his cards 
 against his chin, and throws them down 
 energetically on the chair with his right 
 hand. 
 
 The chair is rather far off, the cards are 
 dirty, and sometimes Houdebine asks his 
 silent adversary: "What's that?" 
 
 Panchat takes the card and holds it out at 
 arm's length. 
 
 Houdebine laughs gaily. 
 
 He plays his cards one after the other, and 
 dummy's hand also: 
 
 "Trump! Trump! Trump! And ace of 
 hearts !" 
 
 Even those who cannot see anything laugh 
 too. 
 
 Panchat is vexed, but he too laughs noise- 
 lessly. Then he takes out the lost sou from 
 under his straw pillow. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mulet is telling a story. It is 
 always the same story, but it is always in- 
 teresting. 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 215 
 
 An almost imperceptible voice, perhaps 
 Legras', hums slowly: 
 
 Si tu veux fair* mon bonheur. 
 
 Who talks of happiness here? 
 
 I recognise the accents of obstinate, gener- 
 ous life. I recognise thine accents, artless 
 flesh ! Only thou couldst dare to speak of hap- 
 piness between the pain of the morning and 
 that of the evening, between the man who is 
 groaning on the right, and the man who is 
 dying on the left. 
 
 Truly, in the utmost depths of Hell, the 
 damned must mistake their need of joy for 
 joy itself. 
 
 I know quite well that there is hope here. 
 
 So that in hell too there must be hope. 
 
 IX 
 
 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 
 
216 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 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 espe- 
 cially because it has become a thing so ordinary 
 that it no longer causes us to suspend our 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 217 
 
 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 courage- 
 ous, 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 
 
218 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 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. 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 219 
 
 X 
 
 A whole nation, ten whole nations are 
 learning to live in Death's company. Hu- 
 manity 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 ad- 
 miration 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 
 
220 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
 
 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 
 
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 221 
 
 to change the dressings skilfully and care- 
 fully. 
 
 It is also my mission to record the history 
 of those who have been the sacrificial victims 
 of the race, without gloss, in all its truth and 
 simplicity; the history of the men you have 
 shown yourselves to be in suffering. 
 
 If I left this undone, you would, no doubt, 
 be cured as perfectly, or would perish none 
 the less; but the essence of the majestic lesson 
 would be lost, the most splendid elements of 
 your courage would remain barren. 
 
 And I invite all the world to bow before you 
 with the same attentive reverence, with hearts 
 that forget nothing. 
 
 Union of pure hearts to meet the ordeal! 
 Union of pure hearts that our country may 
 know and respect herself! Union of pure 
 hearts for the redemption of the stricken 
 world! 
 
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