"I am haunted by a melody, a tune. Could you help me? It won't come."
"It's not the Marseillaise?" asked the other, sitting down by his side and pulling Pitchouné's ears.
"Oh, no!"
"There will be singing in the ward shortly. A Red Cross nurse comes to sing to the patients. She may help you to remember."
Sabron renounced in despair. Haunting, tantalizing in his brain and illusive, the notes began and stopped, began and stopped. He wanted to ask his friend a thousand questions. How he had come to him, why he had come to him, how he knew... He gave it all up and dozed, and while he slept the sweet sleep of those who are to recover, he heard the sound of a woman's voice in the distance, singing, one after another, familiar melodies, and finally he heard the Kyrie Eleison, and to its music Sabron again fell asleep.
The next day he received a visitor. It was not an easy matter to introduce visitors to his bedside, for Pitchouné objected. Pitchouné received the Marquise d'Esclignac with great displeasure.
"Is he a thoroughbred?" asked the Marquise d'Esclignac.
"He has behaved like one," replied the officer.
There was a silence. The Marquise d'Esclignac was wondering what her niece saw in the pale man so near still to the borders of the other world.
"You will be leaving the army, of course," she murmured, looking at him interestedly.