He pinned it on to Leglise’s shirt, and kissed my friend on both cheeks, simply and affectionately.

Then he talked to him again for a few minutes.

I was greatly pleased.  Really, this General is one of the right sort.

The medal has been wrapped in a bit of muslin, so that the flies may not soil it, and hung on the wall over the bed.  It seems to be watching over the wounded man, to be looking on at what is happening.  Unfortunately, what it sees is sad enough.  The right leg, the only leg, is giving us trouble now.  The knee is diseased, it is in a very bad state, and all we have done to save it seems to have been in vain.  Then a sore has appeared on the back, and then another sore.  Every morning, we pass from one misery to another, telling the beads of suffering in due order.

So a man does not die of pain, or Leglise would certainly be dead.  I see him still, opening his eyes desperately and checking the scream that rises to his lips.  Oh!  I thought indeed that he was going to die.  But his agony demands full endurance; it does not even stupefy those it assails.

I call on every one for help.

“Genest, Barrassin, Prevot, come, all of you.”

Yes, let ten of us do our best if necessary, to support Leglise, to hold him, to soothe him.  A minute of his endurance is equal to ten years of such effort as ours.

Alas! were there a hundred of us he would still have to bear the heaviest burden alone.

All humanity at this hour is bearing a very cruel burden.  Every minute aggravates its sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its aid?

We made an examination of the wounded man, together with our chief, who muttered almost inaudibly between his teeth: 

“He must be prepared for another sacrifice.”

Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely consummated.

But Leglise understood.  He no longer weeps.  He has the weary and somewhat bewildered look of the man who is rowing against the storm.  I steal a look at him, and he says at once in a clear, calm, resolute voice: 

“I would much rather die.”

I go into the garden.  It is a brilliant morning, but I can see nothing, I want to see nothing.  I repeat as I walk to and fro: 

“He would much rather die.”

And I ask despairingly whether he is not right perhaps.

All the poplars rustle softly.  With one voice, the voice of Summer itself, they say:  “No!  No!  He is not right!”

A little beetle crosses the path before me.  I step on it unintentionally, but it flies away in desperate haste.  It too has answered in its own way:  “No, really, your friend is not right.”

“Tell him he is wrong,” sing the swarm of insects that buzz about the lime-tree.

And even a loud roar from the guns that travels across the landscape seems to say gruffly:  “He is wrong!  He is wrong!”

During the evening the chief came back to see Leglise, who said to him with the same mournful gravity: