"You are avenged, my dear."
It seems they had gone out to where Fred Ryan lay, and Partridge, to attract the fire of the soldiers across the street in the Sinn Fein Bank, had stooped over the dead boy to lift him. There were only two soldiers and they both fired. That gave Madam a chance to sight them. She fired twice and killed both.
They tell me that all next day I was delirious and lay moaning and talking incoherently. It was not the bullets that brought me to this pass, but pneumonia. Even so I am glad I was there and not at a hospital. Later a doctor who was summoned made the mistake of using too much corrosive sublimate on my wounds, and for once I knew what torture is. The mistake took all the skin off my side and back. But Madam is a natural nurse. Among her friends she was noted for her desire to care for them if they fell ill. Some one was almost always in bed at Surrey House; some friend whose eyes might be troubling her to whom the countess would read aloud or apply soothing applications; a Fianna boy, or an actress from the Abbey Theater who needed to build up her nerves. Thus I was in good hands, and besides, following my instinct, I ate nothing for the next three days, but drank quantities of water.
PEARSE'S LAST PROCLAMATION
Written under shell and shrapnel fire. (His marvelous
handwriting is due to his mastery of the Gaelic script.)
Headquarters, Army of the Irish Republic,
General Post Office
Dublin.
28th April, 1916. 9·30, a.m.
The Forces of the Irish Republic, which was proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 24th April, have been in possession of the central part of the Capital since 12 noon on that day. Up to yesterday afternoon, Headquarters was in touch with all the main outlying positions, and despite furious and almost continuous assaults by the British Forces all those positions were then still being held, and the Commandants in charge were confident of their ability to hold them for a long time.