My hospital was, all of it, built in the time that means lovely things of red-brick and grey stone and blue gables. The courtyards are paved with huge ancient cobbles, and there are grass plots that are green and wet, and big trees and bushes whose leaves are falling slowly in blue stillness.
There are more than two thousand sick in my hospital, six hundred wounded of the war, one hundred and fifty of them in our service.
I love to write "my" hospital and "our" service.
Madame Marthe
Hospital, Tuesday, October 19th
Things had been very bad all day. When night came it seemed dreadful to go away and leave so much suffering. I thought of the night, with fever and that special helplessness which belongs to the night.
I would have been so glad to stay the night out with the ward.
I said that to Madame Marthe, as we left together.
She said, "But why?"
She always has a cold and wears a little blue woollen cape over her blouse and apron. When she leaves the hospital she pins up the two black ribbon streamers of her cap of the tri-couleurs and wraps her arms around in the blue woollen cape. She looks very small and cold and poor.
"Why?" she asked.