Alas! I don't know, I fear not; but they must come quickly. Their tears blind them, she can't see her steps; she stumbles, and I have to give her my arm for support.
The moment she approaches her son she recognizes the shadow of death on his dear face, and would have given a cry of sorrow, but that Sister Gabrielle stops her, putting a finger on her lips. Soldiers who die must be surrounded by so great a peace.
"Here is your mother, here quite near to you," says the calm voice of the Sister in the ear of the dying man. "She embraces you. Your father is here, too. And here is the crucified One, Our Lord, here on your lips."
The little soldier kisses the cross and smiles at his mother; then his eyes, wide open, and as if drawn by some invincible attraction, turn and fix themselves on the open window opposite the bed, through which can be seen the infinite depths of the sky. Nothing again, till his last breath was drawn, could make his gaze turn elsewhere. Where have I already beheld a scene like this? I remember—it was in Greece, at Athens, last year. In the room of the tombs, a simple and admirable funeral monument represents death. A fine young man of twenty is standing ready to depart. His parents, their faces torn with sorrow, stretch out their arms to him, calling him, but he, so calm in the purity of the white marble, his eyes as if fascinated, looks fixedly, with all his thought, into the distance, one knows not where. As we passed this masterpiece, the young Greek who was with me whispered to me:
"Look at that boy there. He sees something else."
Our little soldier, too, seemed to see something else. The chaplain gave him the last blessings. The mysterious shore drew nearer moment by moment. A deep silence, solemnly calm and very moving, fell suddenly on the great room into which the terrible visitor was so soon to penetrate; truly he must die well, surrounded thus by his comrades, upheld until the end by a Sister of Charity. The wings of her white cornette tremble above the young face in its last agony. The Sister's voice, already a supernatural one, is the last of this world's voices that Private Mèchin is to hear. She says, and he repeats slowly, the supreme invocation: "O God, receive me into Thy Paradise. Jesus, have mercy on me. Holy Mother of God, pray for us in the hour of our death."
It is over ... the last breath exhales gently. The young soldier's gaze is fixed forever on the great light of God. Sister Gabrielle gently closes his eyelids and places the crucifix on the boy's heart. All is so calm, so evangelical, that the parents themselves dare not weep. Ah, how truly he spoke, the chaplain who wrote from the front: "The soldiers of France die without pain, like angels."
When the parents were led away for a while Sister Gabrielle piously replaced the sheet on the dead face, and said to me:
"This is the time for the patients' dinners. If you will, we'll go and serve them, and then we'll come back and lay out the body of this poor lad here."
I look at her wonderingly; she is very pale, and her eyes are full of unshed tears. She busies herself with the necessities of them all, with her usual clear-headedness. Have they already broken with everything of earth, these Sisters, lifted themselves for good above the most pardonable frailty?