Time went on and on. At the end of a fortnight they had given my leg a thorough dressing for the first time. The compresses, with the aid of hot water, had come off more quickly, and given me less pain than I had feared they might. Bujard congratulated me on the condition of my wound. There was no trace of suppuration. Three weeks more and I should get up!
I smiled at his words of encouragement. I marvelled at feeling nothing at the severed stump but a sort of tickling which was sometimes, by the way, almost intolerable. The feeling that my right thigh had nothing to counter-balance it was very queer too.
The occupants of our ward had nearly all recovered. Some more beds were added. They tried to make more room, and sent away a great many of those who could stand up. Cadieu was despatched to a convalescent home. He went hobbling off, much amused by his crutches. And merriment went with him.
Many of the new arrivals appeared exhausted and worn out. They arrived in an infected state—it was the end of October—from the ghastly slaughters in Belgium. There were several cases of tetanus and gangrene. I remember a big fellow, belonging to the naval brigade, who screamed with pain all night, and died at dawn.
I found this promiscuousness very trying, and lost strength again. My friend Bujard noticed it, and, after having consulted me, arranged for me to have a little room to myself. I took leave of the sister, Ste. Thérèse.
To begin with I missed the fresh air in the ward. I was reduced to the society of my father as sole companion, and he was not well, because he had had an attack of choking one evening, in the thick of the battle of the Yser, when he had thought our line had been broken through. Bujard had warned me that he was threatened with angina pectoris.
And yet with what solicitude the poor man surrounded me. He was by my side from eight o'clock in the morning onwards. He never left me during the day, and had obtained permission to have his meals brought up there. He tried everything imaginable to alleviate the monotony of my long convalescence. He joined a library so that I might have books, and tired himself by reading to me for hours together. In the end I had to implore Bujard to forbid him to read. He bought me a quantity of maps of different scales, and we tried to follow the situation, and the manœuvres of our five principal armies during the immortal days at the beginning of September. We marked out the actual front with little flags.
We talked, too. I evoked certain scenes from my childhood, our Lorraine, Eberménil. It caused my father frightful distress to think that the enemy were still there. "But not for long," he growled, grinding his teeth.
If I pressed the subject and recalled some happy occasion on which our dear departed ones had figured at our sides, then I used to see him fall into a deep day-dream, into which I dared not break. He belonged to those whose grief is frozen and taciturn, more heart-rending, perhaps, than ours, which is assuaged when we give vent to it.