"Of course," said Bertha, as if addressing me, "you will understand that we can give no expression to our joy just now."
Annette, indeed, did not permit us to linger long over this joyful message. She said that her patients now claimed all her time, and only while we were descending the steps, she once stopped and quietly related to us how her old custom of pouring out her feelings with every new experience had suddenly opened the hearts that had so long been as if sealed towards each other. She had said to Richard, who recently passed through here, "So long as men are well, they are all alike. When they are wounded or sick, each one displays the traits that are peculiar to him." Then Richard replied, "You speak from my mother's soul;" and on that day they were betrothed.
"Now I no more need," said Annette, as we went on, "to chloroform my soul with religion. I have learned to apply the real chloroform, and in helping others we help ourselves also."
Annette invited us to go with her to the patients; she might thereby make the tedious hours of watching more easy for Bertha. She first conducted us to a handsome young man with a full, blond beard, whose thigh had been fractured. Her mere appearance seemed to revive the sick man.
It was a pathetic look with which he gazed upon her, and stretched his thin hand towards her.
Annette introduced him to us as an artist of great repute, and, assuming a merry tone of voice, she said, "He has painted me in other colors. He does not like the dull and sombre black; indeed, the silver-gray dress with the white apron is much more cheerful. And why should we not be cheerful?"
The face of the young man brightened, and Annette bade Bertha to read something to him. In going the rounds, she made us acquainted with a wounded German officer, who never ceased heaping extravagant praises upon his nurse. Annette bade me to come quickly to a man from my village, for whom I could perhaps do something, and, with a trembling voice, mentioned Carl's name to me.
We approached his bed. He gazed upon me with staring eyes, and cried, in heart-rending tones, "Mother, mother!" I spoke to him; I asked him if he knew me. But he continually exclaimed, "Mother, mother, mother!"
The surgeon came and bade us leave the patient. Then he said to Annette, "Have a screen placed here. This young man may die at any moment, and the others should neither see nor know of it."
Just as the screen was put in its place, the door opened, and a voice was heard, "My child! my child! Carl! my child! Carl!"