There was no one but me to bring him flowers, but he had a big fine tin wreath from his comrades of our service, and his palms from the Ville de Paris, and the spray of zinc flowers with the ribbon marked "Souvenir Français" that, Madame Bayle said, is always sent from the Ministère de la Guerre.
Madame Bayle came with us. She is fat and always ill, but she could be spared from the linen-room. I never had seen her before "en civil." She had a large black hat from which, she told me, she had, for the occasion, taken off fourteen red roses. I thought, as we walked together, "Why, she and I are bitter enemies! For nine months we have quarrelled every day!"
We walked together, close behind the boy, who had no one but we two and five of his comrades to follow him.
It was hot, there was no air at all. There was a terrible odour of disinfectant.
Madame Bayle said, "It is because of the gangrene," and quite worried for fear I could not stand it.
And I worried about her bad knee. Was it bad to-day? I was afraid she would be very tired.
We felt most sympathetically about each other.
She kept saying, "It is all the same sad, it is all the same sad."
One of the wounded said, "Not so sad as to lie out for the crows in no-man's-land."