Part 3 (2/2)

He said philosophically:

”It is shorter, but with a good thick sole....”

When Marie was better, he raised himself on his elbow, and he understood the extent of his injury more clearly.

”I shall want a VERY thick sole,” he remarked.

Now that Lerondeau can sit up, he, too, can estimate the extent of the damage from above; but he is happy to feel life welling up once more in him, and he concludes gaily:

”What I shall want is not a sole, but a little bench.”

But Carre is ill, terribly ill.

That valiant soul of his seems destined to be left alone, for all else is failing.

He had one sound leg. Now it is stiff and swollen.

He had healthy, vigorous arms. Now one of them is covered with abscesses.

The joy of breathing no longer exists for Carre, for his cough shakes him savagely in his bed.

The back, by means of which we rest, has also betrayed him. Here and there it is ulcerated; for man was not meant to lie perpetually on his back, but only to lie and sleep on it after a day of toil.

For man was not really intended to suffer with his miserable, faithless body!

And his heart beats laboriously.

There was mischief in the bowel too. So much so, that one day Carre was unable to control himself, before a good many people who had come in.

In spite of our care, in spite of our friendly a.s.surances, Carre was so ashamed that he wept. He who always said that a man ought not to cry, he who never shed a tear in the most atrocious suffering, sobbed with shame on account of this accident. And I could not console him.

He no longer listens to all we say to him. He no longer answers our questions. He has mysterious fits of absence.

He who was so dignified in his language, expresses himself and complains with the words of a child.

Sometimes he comes up out of the depths and speaks.

He talks of death with an imaginative lucidity which sounds like actual experience.

Sometimes he sees it... And as he gazes, his pupils suddenly distend.

But he will not, he cannot make up his mind....

He wants to suffer a little longer.

I draw near to his bed in the gathering darkness. His breathing is so light that suddenly, I stop and listen open-mouthed, full of anxiety.

<script>