Our little 17 received his Cross and also his Military medal. He managed to get downstairs and stand up with the others, most of them like himself on crutches. Yesterday he had news of his mother's death. He told me he had never had a father. "Il du être un salaud, ce type-là," he told me. His only brother had been reported missing since more than a year. He kept calling me over every few minutes—when he was back in the ward, and in his bed, very tired—to show me his medals in their two green boxes. He had no one of his own to whom to show them.
There was much big work to be done, and the ward was so clouded all day with the choking blue smoke of iodine from the hot washings and dressings.
Madame Marthe was very nervous, and Madame Alice seemed especially sullen.
I wondered—was it that her poor little Jeanjean is worse again, there, where he has been all these months, in the children's hospital, cared for by others than she?
I was thinking all the day of it, and never dared to ask her.
Madame Marthe stood all day by the bed of 34. She would say to him, "Now breathe, breathe. Now breathe." If ever she stopped saying it, for one instant, he stopped breathing. It was as if the only thing he understood was that he must obey her.
Madame Alice did all she possibly could of her work for her, sullenly, together with her own hard work.
It was a very bad day; I am proud to belong in such days.
I was thinking very much of the garden of the sphynxes and white peacocks, that is in ruin, and of the tower room given over to bats and swallows.