I slept and slept. I come to life again. I open my eyes. Have I been dreaming? I should be tempted to think so. I have difficulty in persuading myself of the reality of my misfortune. My gaze never rests without astonishment on the fold in my bed-clothes, where it sinks down over the stump of my excised thigh.
Stupefaction, yes: rather than distress. I am less crushed by it than I should have expected. What an abominable thing the existence of beings mutilated in this way used formerly to seem to me. To-day the fate which awaits me does not make me revolt. I smile, without too much melancholy, at the motherly words of encouragement from the excellent nun. I take note, almost with amusement of the sensations of itching in my missing sole and big toe, common in patients who have had a leg amputated.
The secret of my serenity is to be found in the fact that my thoughts return to the decisive engagement when leading my men. I had consented to the sacrifice. Intoxicating moments which could only be paid for with my life! And this last week again, I had seen my coffin open; death flowed in my veins. Now Destiny had had mercy on me. I might well consider myself blest!
But this period did not last long. At the end of a few days, the memory of my recent tortures paled. The withdrawal of this shadow robbed my present condition of its tinge of consolation.
There were ten of us in this ward, all seriously wounded, and operated on under favourable conditions. The general atmosphere was one of cheerfulness. I was soon out of sympathy with it.
I had made friends with my next-door neighbour, a recruit of twenty, Cadieu, by name. He was always in the most uproarious spirits and quite irresistible. I compared him with Judsi. What vitality there must be in a race which produces such men by thousands! His leg amputated too, and like mine, in the "upper third," he gaily made the best of it. First of all there was the pension. And then as an adjuster of scales it wouldn't worry him so much as all that! And then, what was a leg more or less after all?
He told me how he had been hit. When he had got the splinter in his leg, he had said to himself: "Well done! Of course you would just go and get in the light!" Lying down in a furrow he was waiting quietly for—what? Blimey! the end o' the war! The crackling was still going on as hard as ever. Suddenly, paf! Oh, my eye! A bullet in the foot. But 'e'd 'ad one bit o' luck. It was the one on the same side!
The boy had at once confided his love affairs to me. His lady friend was a housemaid to some people of good position. Her name was Margaret. "It all began by that there song, you remember 'ow it goes, 'Margaret, give me your 'eart.' I 'ummed it to 'er—." One child brought up in the country by her parents, good old things. He expected her to come and see him at the beginning of next month: "You're kept at it pretty 'ard in 'er trade! But 'er missus' 'usband 'as just bin 'napoohed' too. She bolted off to 'im in double-quick time, an' w'en Margaret was seein' 'er orf at the station, she up and told 'er that 'er boy was knocked out, too, and blowed if the lidy didn't feel sorter touched by it, and offered 'er a fortnight's 'oliday!"
His outpourings at an end, Cadieu, seeing I was still depressed, watched me out of the corner of his eye.
"And wot abaht you? An' your sweet'eart?" he said to me one day.