'Well, make haste and cure me, doctor, so that I may return to my duties,' said Jean smiling.
However, both he and Henriette were greatly saddened by all these evil tidings. That same evening there was another snowstorm, and next day, when Henriette came back from the ambulance shivering, she announced that Gutmann was dead. The bitter cold was decimating the wounded, emptying rows upon rows of beds. The wretched dumb soldier with the tongueless mouth had agonised during two long days. Henriette had remained at his bedside during his last hours, unable to resist the supplicating glances he had turned towards her. He spoke to her with his tearful eyes, perhaps trying to tell her his real name, and the name of the distant village where his wife and little ones were waiting for him. And he passed away, unknown, sending her with his twitching fingers a last farewell kiss, as though to thank her for all her kindness. She alone accompanied his body to the cemetery, where the frozen earth, the heavy foreign soil mingled with lumps of snow, fell with a dull sound upon his deal coffin.
Then on her return the next evening she exclaimed: '"Poor child" is dead!' For this one she was weeping: 'If you could only have seen him in his delirium. He called me "Mamma! mamma!" and stretched out such loving arms that I had to take him on my knees. Ah! the poor fellow! suffering had so wasted him that he weighed no heavier than a little boy. And I rocked him in my arms so that he might die relieved—yes, I rocked him whilst he called me mother, though I am but a few years older than he was. He wept, poor fellow, and I could not help weeping myself and am still weeping now.' Her sobs were suffocating her and she had to pause. 'When he died,' she resumed, 'he stammered that nickname of his: "Poor child! poor child!" Ah, yes indeed, they are poor children, all of them, all those brave fellows, some of them so young, whom your abominable war maims and mangles, whom it condemns to so much suffering before they are laid in the ground!'
And now not a day went by but Henriette came home distracted by some fresh agony; and the sufferings of others seemed to link her and Jean closer together during the sad hours when they were so much alone in that large, peaceful room. And yet those hours were also very sweet ones, for affection had come to them, a fraternal affection, as they thought, between their two hearts which had slowly learned to know one another. He, of such a thoughtful nature, had risen to a higher level during their continuous intimacy; she, finding him so good and reasonable, no longer remembered that he was but one of the humble, and had driven the plough before he carried the knapsack. They agreed together very well, they got on capitally, as Silvine expressed it with her grave smile. No embarrassment had ever arisen between them whilst she nursed him. Invariably clad in the black garments of her widowhood, it seemed as though she had ceased to be a woman.
And yet, during the long afternoons when he found himself alone, Jean could not help pondering on it all. His feeling towards her was one of infinite gratitude, a kind of devout respect that would have impelled him to brush aside any idea of love as sacrilegious. Still he reflected that had he had such a woman as her for his wife, one so loving, so gentle, and so helpful, life would have become an earthly paradise. His earlier misfortunes, the evil years he had spent at Rognes, his disastrous marriage, the tragic death of his wife, all the past came back to him with regretfulness for love, and a vague confused hope of wooing happiness once more. He closed his eyes, allowed himself to sink into a semi-somnolent state, and then confusedly pictured himself at Remilly, married afresh, and owning a field or two, which would suffice to provide for a couple of honest, unaspiring folks. The vision was so slight, so vague, that it could most certainly never have any existence. Indeed, he deemed himself henceforth incapable of any warmer feeling than friendship, and if he were so attached to Henriette it was, he thought, simply because he was Maurice's brother. Nevertheless, this hazy dream of marriage at last became a consolation as it were, one of those fancies with which one cheers the hours of sadness, though one knows that they can never be realised.
No such thoughts, however, had for a moment presented themselves to Henriette's mind. The atrocious tragedy of Bazeilles had lacerated her heart, and if any relief, any fresh affection were penetrating it, it could only be without her knowledge, by a stealthy march like that of the germinating seed, whose hidden labour there is nothing to reveal. She was ignorant even of the pleasure she at last took in remaining for hours beside Jean's bed, reading to him those newspapers which brought them, however, only sadness. Never had the slightest warmth come to her hand when it brushed against his; never even had thought of the morrow left her in a dreamy mood, with a wish to be loved again. And yet it was only in that room that she forgot, and felt consoled. When she was there, busying herself with her gentle activeness, her heart grew calmer; it seemed to her as though her brother would soon come back again, that everything would be arranged, and that it would end by their all being happy together, never to part again. And she would speak of all this without feeling in any wise embarrassed, so natural did it seem to her that things should end in this way; and never did she think of questioning herself any further, utterly ignorant as she was that she had chastely bestowed her heart.
One afternoon, however, as she was about to return to the ambulance, the terror that froze her at sight of a Prussian captain and two other officers whom she found in the kitchen revealed to her the great affection that she felt for Jean. These officers had evidently heard of the wounded man's presence at the farm, and had come to fetch him—he would inevitably be dragged away, carried off into captivity in the depths of some German fortress. She listened, trembling, with her heart beating loudly.
The captain, a stout man, who spoke French with scarcely any foreign accent, was violently upbraiding old Fouchard: 'It cannot go on like this,' he said; 'you are playing the fool with us! I came in person to warn you that should it occur again I shall make you responsible, and take steps to punish you.'
The old man, although he was really very cool and collected, affected the bewilderment of one who fails to understand, with his mouth agape and his arms hanging: 'What is it, sir, what is it?'
'Don't get my blood up; you know very well that the three cows you sold us last Sunday were rotten—yes, rotten—or rather diseased; killed by some disgusting complaint—for the meat has quite poisoned my men, and two of them must now be dead.'