The distribution of water is followed by that of bouillon and soup, of which the servants of the Commissary Department are obliged to cook a marvelous quantity.
Thick bundles of lint are placed here and there. Everyone can use it freely; but bandages, linen and shirts are lacking, and one can hardly procure the most necessary articles. I purchase, however, some new shirts by the aid of those kind-hearted women who have already given all their old linen; and, on Monday, early in the morning, I send my coachman to Brescia to bring back supplies. He returns after some hours with his cabriolet loaded with sponges, linen, pins, cigars, tobacco, camomile, mallow, sambuca, oranges, sugar and lemons.
This makes it possible to give refreshing lemonade, wash the wounds with mallow-water, put on warm compresses and renew the material of the bandages.
In the meantime we have gained some recruits, who help us. The first is an old naval officer, then some English tourists, who, desiring to see everything, have entered the church, and whom we keep almost by force. Two other Englishmen, on the contrary, show themselves desirous to help. They distribute cigars to the Austrians. An Italian priest, three or four travelers, a Swiss merchant from Neuchatel, a Parisian journalist, who afterwards takes charge of the relief in the adjacent church, and some officers whose company has received orders to remain in Castiglione, also aid us.
But soon some of those voluntary nurses go away, not being able to bear the sight of this suffering. The priest follows their example, but he reappears, however, with delicate kindness to make us smell aromatic herbs and bottles of salts. A tourist, oppressed at the sight of these living debris, swooned from emotion. The merchant from Neuchatel perseveres for two days, bandaging wounds and writing for the dying letters of farewell to their families. We are obliged to quiet the compassionate excitement of a Belgian, fearing that he will have an attack of burning fever.
Some men of the detachment, left to garrison the city, try to help their comrades, but cannot endure the sight which breaks down their courage, striking too keenly upon their imagination. Nevertheless, a corporal of the engineer corps, wounded at Magenta, almost restored to health and about to return to his battalion, but whose orders leave him a few days of liberty, aids us with courage and perseverance.
The French Commissary, remaining in Castiglione, finally grants, on my insistence, authority to utilize for service in the hospitals, some healthy prisoners, and three or four Austrian physicians who aid the efforts of the few surgeons left in Castiglione.
A German physician remaining voluntarily on the battle-field to care for the soldiers, dedicates himself to the injured of both armies. After three days the Commissary sends him back to Mantua to rejoin his compatriots.
"Do not leave me to die," exclaim some of these agonized men seizing my hand in despair, but their death is not long delayed.
"Ah, sir, if you would write to my father, that he might console my poor mother!" said to me, with tears in his eyes, a corporal named Mazuet, scarcely twenty years old. I noted down the address of his parents and a few minutes later he had ceased to live. The parents, who dwelt on rue d'Alger, in Lyons, and of whom this young man, enlisted as a volunteer, was the only son, received no other information about their child than that which I sent to them. He very probably, like so many others, has been enscribed, "disappeared."