When Number 17 was so very ill, I think it was she who drove death away from his bed. She worked and swore, and worked and swore. It was hideous. I laugh when I remember. Afterwards I found her outside in the corridor, sitting on the bench. He was going to get well. I cried; and she swore at me till I laughed.
Big red blotches come out on her arms when she is excited, and get purple when she is tired. If you visit the hospital, you do not know what to think of her. But if you work there you admire her, and are proud when she speaks to you kindly. It is an illumined day if by chance she says to you, "Bon jour, ma crotte."
Madame Marthe Again
I don't know at all how it happens that a little white mouse of a woman of the people, who has worked and worked all her life, and never been cared for by anybody, should have beautiful hands. But Madame Marthe has beautiful hands. Her hands are small and quick and absolutely sure. They tremble when things are bad, but in spite of that they are certain and sure. They never make a mistake. And they are not afraid of anything.
Sometimes my hands are afraid to touch things, and then I am ashamed. Sometimes I pretend not to see things that are fallen on the floor, and when she picks them up, I am so ashamed.
If my two hands were poisoned so that they had to be cut off, it would not make any difference. But what would the ward do if anything happened to the hands of Madame Marthe?
The Ward—All Souls' Day
There are twenty-eight beds against the walls of the ward and ten stretcher-beds down the middle of its long clear bright length. Between the beds there is no room to push the dressing cart about, it stands close up against the apparatus of dressings.
There are some things that make stains on the whiteness of the ward. When I am away from it, I see those things standing out against the whiteness.