They take hold of Gregoire most carefully to lay him on the stretcher. The wounded man criticises all their movements peevishly:
"Ah! don't turn me over like that. And you must hold my leg better than that!"
The sweat breaks out on Baffin's face. Monsieur Bouin's eye-glasses fall off. At last they bring the patient along.
As soon as he comes into the dressing ward, Gregoire is pale and perspiring. His harsh tawny beard quivers, hair by hair. I divine all this, and say a few words of encouragement to him from afar.
"I shan't be long with you this morning, Gregoire. You won't have time to say 'oof'!"
He preserves a sulky silence, full of reservations. He looks like a condemned criminal awaiting execution. He is so pre-occupied that he does not even answer when the sarcastic Sergeant says as he passes him:
"Ah! here's our grouser."
At last he is laid on the table which the wounded men call the "billiard-table."
Then, things become very trying. I feel at once that whatever I do, Gregoire will suffer. I uncover the wound in his thigh, and he screams. I wash the wound carefully, and he screams. I probe the wound, from which I remove small particles of bone, very gently, and he utters unimaginable yells. I see his tongue trembling in his open mouth. His hands tremble in the hands that hold them, I have an impression that every fibre of his body trembles, that the raw flesh of the wound trembles and retracts. In spite of my determination, this misery affects me, and I wonder whether I too shall begin to tremble sympathetically. I say:
"Try to be patient, my poor Gregoire."