“You can’t have any more,” she answered.
“And now,” said François in a much stronger voice, “I know that I am not wool-gathering, but it is really you, Diane Dorian, otherwise Skinny, because you are so obstinate, just as in the old days.”
While Diane was speaking, she noticed that Jean had sunk on a low bench from which he slipped softly to the floor, his eyes closed and his face gray. Diane ran to him, and catching his head to keep it from striking the floor, found blood upon her hand. Jean’s neck was bleeding—François was not the only wounded man.
Diane, with her lately gained experience and assisted by old Marie, turned back Jean’s collar and shirt and found there a wound almost as bad as François’. That, too, was washed and bound with strips of Diane’s white petticoat, and then Jean came to himself, and asked, as all wounded men do, for water.
“Give him some champagne,” said François, feebly, from his pallet.
This Diane did, and then, with Marie’s help, laid Jean upon her own pallet.
Then began for the two women a silent vigil that lasted more than a week. They took turns in watching and sleeping. By extreme good fortune both of their patients progressed wonderfully, the wounds healing with the first intention. At the end of the week Jean was able to walk about the inner room, while François, though unable to walk, could sit up in the one chair which the cellars possessed.
Still were darkness and silence maintained within the cellars, although there was noise enough outside. The barricade had become almost a fortress, and as the Communards were hemmed in closer and closer, the barricade was extended. The sound of fighting grew nearer and fiercer, the shouts and cries of men, the rattle of ammunition wagons over the stones, the cracking of the mitrailleuse, the crash of bullets; the beating of the rappel, sounded by night as well as by day.
After night had fallen, old Marie would creep out, and by devious and winding streets would find her way to places where for much money a little coarse food could be bought. There was, however, champagne in plenty, and François had no hesitation in declaring in a whisper that his recovery and that of Jean depended upon the quantity of champagne they drank, and that Diane was delaying their convalescence by not letting them have all they wished.
The hours, instead of being long, were extraordinarily short because there was no sunrise or sunset, no day nor night, only a vivid darkness pierced with the light of a single candle. There was nothing to read by the light of the single candle that burned night and day; there was no conversation above a whisper. Familiarity with danger and long immunity made them all forget their fears, but not their prudence.