The voices said they were English Red Cross soldiers, and had been sent in to look after me by a tall old gentleman dressed in a white coat.
Now this most excellent M. Heloire had acted as he thought for the best, but the result was not at all a happy one for me. Whenever I wanted anything the soldiers went downstairs and brought up somebody to whom I had to interpret my requirements. In my exhausted condition this was impossible. The request for a drink and the short conversation with the soldiers had nearly finished me off, but I made one more effort to a large French-speaking shadow. I said, "Renvoyez les anglais."
And so the English soldiers were sent away, and I came under the care of Marthe and Madeleine.
To my dim consciousness all persons were manifest as shadows. Marthe and Madeleine took turns watching me day and night. Marthe sat weeping; a long, long way off her shadow seemed, yet in an instant that same shadow was bending over the bed. "A boire." The water remained untasted; some of it trickled down my face. Then they tried in vain to get me to suck the liquid up a straw. I could hear every word spoken in whispers round my bed. "Il faut aller chercher M. le Curé et M. Heloire," and some one at the door murmured in a low voice, "Il va mourir cette nuit le pauvre." My own thoughts were monopolised by the thirst of fever. Deep black shadows now hovered round my bed. There seemed to be two—one larger and more active than the other. A voice full of pity asked me if I wished to make my confession. The possibility of speech was far away, and even to think was an effort that seemed dangerous. Seeing that I was too weak to make any response, the two Curés administered Extreme Unction. The sound of prayers, which seemed so far away, mingled with the tramp of soldiers, martial music, the rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones, the ceaseless tumult of invasion which for two days and two nights rolled on through the paved streets of Caudry.
It was indeed a feeble dam which from the 23rd to the 26th had held back such a torrent as, while I lay there listening, was flowing on triumphant and irresistible.
Early next morning M. le Curé returned.
"Yes," said Marthe, "he is better; see, he can drink from a glass." Marthe and Madeleine were arranging a table, some one in the room was weeping, the shadows moved and prayed.
There is between life and death a period when the normal process of thought comes to an end—a new mode of consciousness is taking the place of the old—the soul, standing on the threshold, looks back at the body lying helpless.
During the night, in that little room in Caudry, while Marthe sat by my bedside and wept, I was slowly discovering another self, distinct from the body lying on the bed, and yet connected with it in mist and shadow; and this was the shadow of death.