The principal ambulance, which Gabriel and Arnauld reached at this moment, was quite near the ramparts, and not far from the Faubourg d'Isle, which was the most dangerous point, and the one consequently where relief was most essential. It was a large building which had been used before the siege as a storehouse for provisions, but had been placed at the disposal of the surgeons when the need became urgent. The mild summer night made it possible to leave the door in the centre open, to renew and freshen the air. From the foot of the steps, which led up to an outside gallery, Gabriel was able to look into this abode of suffering, where lamps were always kept burning.
It was a heart-rending spectacle. Here and there were a few blood-stained beds prepared in great haste; but such luxuries were reserved for the privileged few. The greater part were stretched on the floor, on mattresses or coverlets, or in some cases on straw simply. Sharp or plaintive moans were continually calling the surgeons or their assistants from all sides; but they, in spite of their zeal, could not hear them all. They attended to dressing those wounds which were most in need of it, and performed the most pressing amputations; the others had to wait. The trembling of fever or the convulsions of agony made the poor wretches twist and turn on their pallets; and where in some corner one of them lay at full length, motionless and without a sound, the winding-sheet laid upon his face told only too plainly that he would nevermore move or complain.
Before this sad and heart-rending picture the strongest and hardest hearts would have lost their courage and their callousness. Even Arnauld du Thill could not repress a shudder; and Gabriel's face became as pale as death.
But all at once a sad smile appeared upon the young man's pallid countenance. In the midst of this Inferno overflowing with suffering, like that described by Dante, a calm and radiant angel, a sweet and lovely Beatrix, burst upon his sight. Diane, Sister Bénie rather, passed tranquilly and sadly in and out among these poor sufferers.
Never had she seemed more beautiful to the dazzled Gabriel. Indeed, at the fêtes of the court, gold and diamonds and velvet did not so well become her as did the coarse woollen dress and white nun's stomacher in that dismal ambulance. With her lovely profile, her modest demeanor, and her look of consolation and encouragement, she might have been taken for the very incarnation of Pity, descending to this home of suffering. The most vivid imagination of a Christian soul could not picture her in more admirable guise; and nothing could be so affecting as to see this peerless beauty lean over the emaciated faces disfigured by anguish, and this king's child holding out her lovely hand to these nameless, dying soldiers.
Gabriel involuntarily thought of Madame Diane de Poitiers, engrossed at that moment, no doubt, with extravagant trifling and shameless amours; and marvelling at the marked contrast between the two Dianes, he said to himself that God had surely endowed the daughter with such virtues to redeem the faults of the mother.
While Gabriel, who was not ordinarily addicted to the habit of dreaming, thus lost himself in his reflections and his comparisons without taking heed of the flight of time, within the ambulance quiet gradually succeeded to the former confusion. The evening was already well advanced; the surgeons completed their rounds; and the bustle and the noise ceased. Silence and repose were enjoined upon the wounded men; and soothing draughts made it easier for them to obey the injunction. Here and there a pitiful moan would be heard, but no more of the almost incessant, heart-rending shrieks of pain. Before another quarter of an hour had elapsed, everything became as calm and quiet as such suffering can be.
Diane had said her last words of comfort and hope to her patients, and had urged rest and patience upon them after the physicians, and more effectively than they. All did their best to obey her voice, so sweet in its imperiousness. When she saw that the prescriptions ordered for each one were at hand, and that for the moment there was no further need of her, she drew a long breath, as if to relieve her breast from its oppressive burden, and drew near the exterior gallery, meaning, no doubt, to take a breath or two of fresh air at the door, and to obtain a little surcease of the wretchedness and weakness of man by gazing upon the stars in God's heaven.
She leaned upon a sort of stone balustrade; and her look, bent upward to the sky, failed to perceive at the foot of the steps, and within ten feet of her, Gabriel in a perfect ecstasy of delight at the sight of her, as if he were standing before some heavenly apparition.
A sharp movement on the part of Martin-Guerre, who did not seem to share in his ecstasy, brought our lover back to earth again.