Madame Marthe says, "What would you have? he is not the only one."
But she is very kind to him, and when she has a half-day's leave she often takes him out with her, for a little treat.
She and I hurried through the dressings this morning and had everything done, our cylinders sent to the sterilization, the apparatus in order, the ward quite neat, in time to go and have lunch, the three of us together, in a big café of the Boulevards.
Gégène was too excited to eat, and so was little Madame Marthe, in her cap of the "Ville de Paris" and her blue woollen shawl. She had to leave it for me to cut up Gégène's chicken and pour his red wine for him.
It rained; the crowd in the Place des Invalides stood under dripping umbrellas.
In the Court of Honour the arcades were packed with wet people, and out in the great central space there was no shelter but umbrellas for the poor great splendid heroes like Gégène.
There they all stood together, those who could stand, in all the pride and tragedy of their crutches and their bandages—one little blinded officer with his head cocked sideways like a bird's. And those who could not stand had chairs and benches; two or three were there on stretchers.
There was a group of women in deep mourning,—some of them with children—who had come to receive the decorations of their dead husbands or sons.
There were the great men of the General Staff,—maybe the Minister of War, maybe the President, maybe the Generalissimo himself—with all their high officers around them, already arrived, near the entrance, astir with preparation.