In the train now, on some straw. Round me those poor unfortunates, spectres, drawing their last breath, can they be men? But I am like them! That first dressing in the train.... They snip and tear my trouser and drawers; my wound is exposed, all soiled; matter and congealed blood. There is some question of detraining me. A red-beard opposes the suggestion, I am put back on to the same straw, in a state of decay. The train starts again, and rolls on and on for days. Unexpected or unknown names of stations. The feeling of being tossed about from one end of France to the other. Oh, this heat, this jolting, this acrid, fetid odour of humanity.... I am sleeping, or dying, unconscious....
A very different period follows—Vichy. A hospital ward, this; and the same bed on which I am still lying. Washed and cared for, I am born anew. I joke with the sister, a cheery soul, an ex-nurse in the expeditionary corps in China; with the house-surgeon—he and I have mutual friends.
My wound is certainly severe—the fibula is shattered, the tibia fractured. I shall limp. But what matter? They have cut away a lot and extracted splinters of bone, and scraps of clothes.... Barring complications, I shall have five or six weeks of it, not more.
Heavens, how beautiful life is! The Battle of the Marne has just been fought. What inspiriting reading the newspapers make. The intoxication of Victory; our Victory. The very day I arrived I was able to have two telegrams sent—their destinations will easily be guessed. Jeannine answered at once, by the ardent letter I had wished for. A promise in it makes my heart leap. The Landrys will arrange to come round by Vichy on their way to the South, where they spend each winter. There is only one slight shadow—an allusion to certain worries of the grandmother's, money matters, from what I can gather.
As to my father: here he is installed at my bedside.
My thoughts are pleasing ones, and linger over such memories. And then—and then!
A Saturday evening. Ever since the morning my leg seems to me to have got heavier.... Thirst dries the very marrow in my bones. My temperature suddenly rises 101.2°. When it is taken again 102.2°. What does it mean? Sunday at eight o'clock 104°. Professor Gauthier, who is called in for a consultation, examines me and seems put out. These confounded leg wounds!
More incisions, and a drainage tube is put back again, and we must wait and see.
What a day! I am consumed with thirst, and burning hot. My leg on fire right up to the hip, paroxysms of suffering, infernal shooting pains. Pus is forming in it. Exhaustion soon follows. My tongue is green, and I vomit. I no longer digest anything. Delirium sets in. I call Maman, I call Jeannine, in a despairing voice....
Those silhouettes of doctors. That consultation round my bed. A haze envelops me ... I hear music! Then Bujard's voice: