"Oh! I'm not a bit afraid, but I wanted to ask you...."
He stopped and began to cry. He drew me still closer to him. He was no coward, this young trooper. One felt it instinctively. I knew that this lad who had lived through the bloody epopee, was not to be approached by maddening fear. His heart was stamped with virility. A month's campaign had made of him an old soldier who had gone through tragic adventures.
"No, I'm not afraid. I've seen so many die all around me that I don't care a scrap whether I live or die. But ... It's my mother, I'm thinking of. If I die, she won't understand, and it will kill her too."
Little by little the sighs and moans had ceased in the darkened ward. Only his solemn words broke the silence. Everything else faded away at the meeting of the two beings, at that supreme moment, more than mere men, the soldier and the priest, to whom France had confided the guarding of her frontiers and the treasure of her ideal.
Then, knowing how nature rebounds, and trusting to the hardy stock from which he sprang, I dared to assure him that he was not mortally wounded.
"No, my child, you won't die, you are too young to die." A sceptical smile stopped me.
"And what about those others 'là-bas?'"
All the same, I don't believe that we shall not be able to save the poor, mangled body. The head doctor, whose diagnosis is never wrong, said only a little while ago that he would save him.
"I tell you, you will recover."
IV—THE STORY FROM HIS DYING LIPS