An old sergeant, decorated with many chevrons, repeated with profound melancholy and an air of conviction full of bitterness: "If someone had cared for me sooner, I should have lived, whereas, this evening I will die." That evening he died.
"I do not want to die! I do not want to die!" cries, with savage energy, a grenadier of the guard, full of strength and health three days before, but who, mortally wounded, and feeling sure that his minutes are irrevocably numbered, fights against this dark certainty. I talk to him, he listens to me, and this man, calmed, soothed, consoled, finally resigns himself to die with the simplicity of a child.
In the back of the church, on the steps of an altar, a Chasseur d'Afrique lies on straw. Three balls have struck him, one on the right side, one on the left shoulder, the third remained in the right leg. It is Sunday, and he asserts that he has eaten nothing since Friday. He is covered with dried mud flecked with blood, his clothing is torn; his shirt is in tatters. After I had washed his wounds, given him a little bouillon and wrapped him in covers, he put my hand to his lips with an expression of unspeakable gratitude. Later we were able to send him to a better hospital.
At the entrance of the church is a Hungarian who cries unceasingly, calling in heartrending tones for a physician. His back and his shoulders, ploughed with grapeshot, appear as if torn by iron hooks and are one mass of quivering, raw flesh. The rest of his body is swollen, green and black—horrible. He can neither lie down nor sit up. I dip some packages of lint in cool water and try to make a cushion for him, but gangrene soon carries him off.
A little further on lies a dying Zouave who is weeping bitter tears, and we console him as if he were a little child. The preceding fatigue, the lack of food and repose, the intensity of the pain, the fear of dying without help, excites even in these brave soldiers a nervous sensibility which betrays itself by sobs. One of their chief thoughts, when they are not suffering too cruelly, is the memory of their mother, and the fear of the grief she will experience on learning of their fate. On the corpse of a soldier we found, hanging from his neck, a medallion containing the portrait of an aged woman, without doubt his mother, which with his left hand he was pressing on his heart.
In the part nearest the great door of the church Maggiore lie, now, on straw, enveloped in covers, about a hundred French non-commissioned officers and soldiers. They are ranged in two nearly parallel ranks, between which one can pass. Their wounds have been dressed. The distribution of soup has taken place. They are quiet. They follow me with their eyes; all heads turn to the left if I go to the left, to the right when I go to the right. Sincere thanks are visible on their astonished faces. "One can easily see that he is a Parisian," say some. "No," retort others, "he seems to be a Southerner." "Truly, sir, are you not from Bordeaux?" asks a third, and each wishes that I might be from his city or province. I met afterwards some of these wounded men, who had become crippled invalids. Recognizing me, they stopped to express their gratitude because I had nursed them in Castiglione. "We called you 'the gentleman in white,'" said one, in his picturesque language, "for you were always dressed entirely in white. It is true the weather did not fail to be hot."
The resignation of the poor soldiers was often touching; they suffered without complaint, they died humbly and silently.
On the other side of the church, some wounded Austrian prisoners fear to receive care which they distrust. They angrily tear off their bandages, opening their bleeding wounds. Others remain silent, dejected, impassive. But the greater number are far from being insensible to kindness and their faces express their thanks. One of them, about nineteen years of age, who with forty of his compatriots is pushed into the deep recesses of the church, has been without food for two days. He has lost one eye, he trembles with fever, he is scarcely able to speak or to drink a little bouillon. Our nursing revives him; twenty-four hours later when we are able to send him to Brescia, he leaves us with sorrow, almost with despair, pressing to his lips the hands of the good-hearted women of Castiglione, whom he entreats not to abandon him.
Another prisoner, a prey to a burning fever, draws attention to himself. He is not yet twenty years of age and his hair is already perfectly white; it became white during the battle, as his wounded comrades near whom he lies assure us.