Then Mme. Baugan drew back the sheets, and, overcome by the sad and ignoble smell, she muttered:
“Oh! Revaud! you are unreasonable. Will you never be able to control yourself!”
Revaud could no longer dissemble. He confessed phlegmatically: “Ah, it’s true enough! But whatever you say, nurse, I can’t help myself.”
Mme. Baugan came and went, looking for fresh linen and water. She began to wash him and dress him as if he were a child.
But suddenly overcome with shame and a kind of despair, he moaned:
“Madame Baugan, don’t be cross with me. I wasn’t like that in civil life.”
Mme. Baugan began to laugh, and Revaud without more ado laughed too, for all the lines of his face and his whole soul were made for laughing, and he loved to laugh even in the midst of the most acute pain.
This reply having pleased him, he trotted it out often, and, when confessing to his little infirmity, he used to tell everyone “I wasn’t like that, you know, before I joined up.”
One morning, in making Mery’s bed, Mme. Baugan startled the room with an exclamation. The paralytic lad had not been able to restrain himself.
“What! Mery! You, too, my poor friend!”