"Why, you here, too—what's the matter?——"
"A foot gone—leg lots shorter—but I complain no longer, Cobusse; you don't suffer much any more—I thought I heard the death rattle those first days——"
"No, I suffer no more——"
"You know how we got here?"
They began reconstructing the scene completely, the bombardment; and they recalled the premonitory whistling of the shell that had wounded them both.
They chatted for a long time and there was a consolation for having been taken prisoner in finding themselves together.
Some weeks later Cochin and his comrade, being improved in health and strength, were evacuated to a hospital in the interior. They made a long journey on the railroad and perceived more and more how unfortunate it was to lose one or more limbs.
On arriving there, Cochin had so lost the notions of equilibrium that he fell several times to the ground to the great despair of Dubois, who thereafter never slackened his hold on him.
Cobusse and Patachon came rapidly to be very close friends; these two wrecks of the war could not be separated and found in each other a reciprocal sustenance.