Every night we used to hear the dismal cry of “Ambulance! Ambulance!” underneath the windows of the Odéon. We went down to meet the pitiful procession, and one, two, or sometimes three conveyances would be there, full of our poor, wounded soldiers. There would be ten or twelve rows of them, lying or sitting up on the straw. I said that I had one or two places, and lifting the lantern, I looked into the conveyance, and the faces would then turn slowly toward the lamp. Some of the men would close their eyes, as they were too weak to bear even that feeble light. With the help of the sergeant who accompanied the conveyance, and our attendant, one of the unfortunates would with difficulty he lifted to the narrow litter on which he was to be carried up to the hospital.
Oh, what sorrowful anguish it was for me when, on lifting the patient’s head, I discovered that it was getting heavy, oh, so heavy; and when bending over that inert face I felt that there was no longer any breath! The sergeant would then give the order to take him back, and the poor dead man was put back in his place, and another wounded man was lifted out. The other dying men would then move back a little, in order not to profane the dead. Ah, what grief it was when the sergeant said: “Do try to take one or two more in! It is a pity to drag these poor chaps about from one hospital to another. The Val-de-Grâce is full.”
“Very well, I will take two more,” I would say, and then I wondered where we should put them. We had to give up our own beds, and in this way the poor fellows were saved. Ever since the first of January, we had all three been sleeping every night at the hospital. We had some loose dressing-gowns of gray swanskin, not unlike the soldiers’ cloaks. The first of us who heard a cry or a groan sprang out of bed, and if necessary, called the other two.
On the 10th of January, Mme. Guérard and I were sitting up at night, on one of the lounges in the artistes’ foyer, awaiting the dismal cry of “Ambulance!” There had been a fierce affray at Clamart and we knew that there would be many wounded. I was telling her of my fear that the bombs, which had already reached the Museum, the Sorbonne, the Salpétrière, the Val-de-Grâce, would fall on the Odéon.
“Oh, but my dear Sarah,” said the sweet woman, “the hospital flag is waving so high above it, that there could be no mistake. If it were struck it would be purposely, and that would be abominable.”
“But Guérard,” I replied, “why should you expect these execrable enemies of ours to be better than we are ourselves? Did we not behave like savages at Berlin, in 1806?”
“But at Paris there are such admirable public monuments,” she urged.
“Well, and was not Moscow full of masterpieces? The Kremlin is one of the finest buildings in the world. That did not prevent us giving that admirable city up to pillage. Oh, no, my poor petite dame, do not deceive yourself! Armies may be Russian, German, French or Spanish, but they are armies, that is, they are beings who form an impersonal ‘whole’—a ‘whole’ that is ferocious and irresponsible. The Germans will bombard the whole of Paris, if the possibility of doing so should be offered them. You must make up your mind to that, my dear Guérard.”
I had not finished my sentence when a terrible detonation roused the sleeping neighborhood. Mme. Guérard and I had been seated opposite each other. We found ourselves standing up, close together in the middle of the room, terrified. My poor cook, her face quite white, came to me for safety. The reports continued rather frequently. The bombarding had commenced from our side that night. I went round to the wounded men, but they did not seem to be much disturbed. Only one, a boy of fifteen, whom we had surnamed “pink baby,” was sitting up in bed. When I went to him to soothe him, he showed me his little medal of the Holy Virgin.
“It is thanks to her that I was not killed,” he said. “If they would put the Holy Virgin on the ramparts of Paris the bombs would not come.”