Then Carre suddenly opens his eyes.
Will he sigh and groan? No. He smiles and says:
"What white teeth you have!"
Then he dreams, as if he were dying.
Could you have imagined such a martyrdom, my brother, when you were driving the plough into your little plot of brown earth?
Here you are, enduring a death-agony of five months swathed in these livid wrappings, without even the rewards that are given to others.
Your breast, your shroud must be bare of even the humblest of the rewards of valour, Carre.
It was written that you should suffer without purpose and without hope.
But I will not let all your sufferings be lost in the abyss. And so I record them thus at length.
Lerondeau has been brought down into the garden. I find him there, stretched out on a cane chair, with a little kepi pulled down over his eyes, to shade them from the first spring sunshine.