“Merciful God, let me die before the end! I do not hear the guns. Why have they ceased firing? Up there at Saint-Menges, at Fleigneux, we have command of all the roads; should the Prussians dare turn Sedan and attack us, we will drive them into the Meuse. The city is there, an insurmountable obstacle between us and them; our positions, too, are the stronger. Forward! the 7th corps will lead, the 12th will protect the retreat—”
And his fingers kept drumming on the counterpane with a measured movement, as if keeping time with the trot of the charger he was riding in his vision. Gradually the motion became slower and slower as his words became more indistinct and he sank off into slumber. It ceased, and he lay motionless and still, as if the breath had left his body.
“Lie still and rest,” Delaherche whispered; “when I have news I will return.”
Then, having first assured himself that he had not disturbed his mother’s slumber, he slipped away and disappeared.
Jean and Maurice, on descending to the shed in the courtyard, had found there an officer of the pay department, seated on a common kitchen chair behind a little unpainted pine table, who, without pen, ink, or paper, without taking receipts or indulging in formalities of any kind, was dispensing fortunes. He simply stuck his hand into the open mouth of the bags filled with bright gold pieces, and as the sergeants of the 7th corps passed in line before him he filled their kepis, never counting what he bestowed with such rapid liberality. The understanding was that the sergeants were subsequently to divide what they received with the surviving men of their half-sections. Each of them received his portion awkwardly, as if it had been a ration of meat or coffee, then stalked off in an embarrassed, self-conscious sort of way, transferring the contents of the kepi to his trousers’ pockets so as not to display his wealth to the world at large. And not a word was spoken; there was not a sound to be heard but the crystalline chink and rattle of the coin as it was received by those poor devils, dumfounded to see the responsibility of such riches thrust on them when there was not a place in the city where they could purchase a loaf of bread or a quart of wine.
When Jean and Maurice appeared before him the officer, who was holding outstretched his hand filled, as usual, with louis, drew it back.
“Neither of you fellows is a sergeant. No one except sergeants is entitled to receive the money.” Then, in haste to be done with his task, he changed his mind: “Never mind, though; here, you corporal, take this. Step lively, now. Next man!”
And he dropped the gold coins into the kepi that Jean held out to him. The latter, oppressed by the magnitude of the amount, nearly six hundred francs, insisted that Maurice should take one-half. No one could say what might happen; they might be parted from each other.
They made the division in the garden, before the ambulance, and when they had concluded their financial business they entered, having recognized on the straw near the entrance the drummer-boy of their company, Bastian, a fat, good-natured little fellow, who had had the ill-luck to receive a spent ball in the groin about five o’clock the day before, when the battle was ended. He had been dying by inches for the last twelve hours.
In the dim, white light of morning, at that hour of awakening, the sight of the ambulance sent a chill of horror through them. Three more patients had died during the night, without anyone being aware of it, and the attendants were hurriedly bearing away the corpses in order to make room for others. Those who had been operated on the day before opened wide their eyes in their somnolent, semi-conscious state, and looked with dazed astonishment on that vast dormitory of suffering, where the victims of the knife, only half-slaughtered, rested on their straw. It was in vain that some attempts had been made the night before to clean up the room after the bloody work of the operations; there were great splotches of blood on the ill-swept floor; in a bucket of water a great sponge was floating, stained with red, for all the world like a human brain; a hand, its fingers crushed and broken, had been overlooked and lay on the floor of the shed. It was the parings and trimmings of the human butcher shop, the horrible waste and refuse that ensues upon a day of slaughter, viewed in the cold, raw light of dawn.