“I think you might stop it more than you do,” said a gruff voice from a face of vinegar close by: “specially of nights.”
“Don’t vex the poor lad,” said Poivre; “he won’t be here long; his time is very short.”
“I am not so sure of that,” replied Gaspard, with some animation. “I thought your time was short, when they brought you in the other day in such a pickle: but I was wrong, you see.”
Poivre laughed; but added with more feeling than he usually shewed, “I fear not, Gaspard; your last campaign is over, depend upon it.”
A bright answer came to this doleful prophecy. “I am glad of it, for then they will discharge me, and let me go home.”
“He never ought to have been a soldier,” growled the man of vinegar.
This remark was not relished by those of the patients who belonged to the same yard as Gaspard—
there were from thirty to forty in hospital all told—for he was a kind-hearted fellow, ready to do anyone a good turn, and, though quiet, by no means a fool, as rowdies always are. So the man of vinegar was hushed down.
The truth was that, as is sometimes the case with consumptive patients, Gaspard was so sanguine about himself, that he never thought he was going to die. To the last he believed he would recover. And, happily, his was not that painful form of the disease where there is a great deal of suffering, and a literal dying by inches, so that the poor sick one longs to be released.
The good chaplain noticed this feature of his complaint, but instead of continually insisting on the fact that he was a dying man, he took the poor fellow, as it were, on his own ground, and treated him as if he were going to live.