“Done for, am I not?”
“No, no!” exclaimed Amedee, with animation. “They are going to dress your wounds at once—They will come soon! Courage, my good Maurice! Courage!”
Suddenly the wounded man had a terrible chill; his teeth chattered, and he said again:
“I am thirsty!—something to drink, my friend!—give me something to drink!”
A few swallows of tea calmed him a little. He closed his eyes as if to rest, but a moment after he opened them, and, fixing them upon his friend’s face, he said to him in a faint voice:
“You know—Maria, my wife—marry her—I confide them to you—she and my son—”
Then, doubtless tired out by the fatigue of having spoken these words, he seemed to collapse and sink down into the litter, which was saturated now with his blood. A moment later he began to pant for breath. Amedee knelt by his side, and tears fell upon his hands, while between the dying man’s gasps he could hear in the distance, upon the battlefield, the uninterrupted rumbling of the cannon as it mowed down others.