Part 17 (1/2)

”How can I sleep with all the things I am thinking about?”

Then he adds faintly:

”Must you? Must you?”

The darkness gives me courage, and I nod my head: ”Yes!”

As I finish his dressings, I speak from the depths of my heart:

”Leglise, we will put you to sleep to-morrow. We will make an examination without letting you suffer, and we will do what is necessary.”

”I know quite well that you will take it off.”

”We shall do what we must do.”

I divine that the corners of his mouth are drawn down a little, and that his lips are quivering. He thinks aloud:

”If only the other leg was all right!”

I have been thinking of that too, but I pretend not to have heard.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

I spend part of the afternoon sewing pieces of waterproof stuff together. He asks me:

”What are you doing?”

”I am making you a mask, to give you ether.”

”Thank you; I can't bear the smell of chloroform.”

I answer ”Yes, that's why.” The real reason is that we are not sure he could bear the brutal chloroform, in his present state.

Leglise's leg was taken off at the thigh this morning. He was still unconscious when we carried him into the dark room to examine his other leg under the X-rays.

He was already beginning to moan and to open his eyes, and the radiographer was not hurrying. I did all I could to hasten the business, and to get him back into his bed. Thus he regained consciousness in bright suns.h.i.+ne.

What would he, who once again was so close to the dark kingdom, have thought if he had awakened in a gloom peopled by shadows, full of whisperings, sparks and flashes of light?

As soon as he could speak, he said to me:

”You have cut off my leg?”

I made a sign. His eyes filled, and as his head was low, the great tears trickled on to the pillow.

To-day he is calmer. The first dressings were very painful. He looked at the raw, b.l.o.o.d.y, oozing stump, trembling, and said:

”It looks pretty horrible!”

We took so many precautions that now he is refreshed for a few hours.