CHAPTER XII
MORE HOSPITAL DAYS
The month of January arrived. The army of the enemy held Paris day by day in a still closer grip. Food was getting scarce. Bitter cold enveloped the city, and the poor soldiers who fell, sometimes only slightly wounded, passed away gently in a sleep that was eternal, their brains numbed and their bodies half frozen.
No more news could be received from outside; but thanks to the United States Minister, who had chosen to remain in Paris, a letter arrived from time to time. It was in this way that I received a thin slip of paper, as delicate as a primrose petal, bringing me the following message: “Everyone well. Courage. A thousand kisses. Your mother.” This impalpable missive dated from seventeen days previously.
And so my mother, my sisters, and my little boy were at The Hague all this time, and my mind which had been continually traveling in their direction had been wandering along the wrong route, toward Hâvre, where I thought they were established tranquilly at the house of a cousin of my father’s mother.
I had my two aunts living at The Hague, but the question was, Were they there at this time? I no longer knew, and from that moment I never ceased suffering the most anxious and torturing mental distress.
I was doing all in my power just then to have some wood for burning. Comte de Kératry had sent me a large provision before his departure to the provinces, in a balloon, on the 9th of October. I was now very short, and I would not allow the stock we had in the cellars to be touched, so that we should not be quite without fuel in case of an emergency. I had all the little footstools belonging to the theater used for firewood, all the wooden cases in which the accessories were kept, a good number of old Roman benches, armchairs, and curule chairs that were stowed away under the Odéon, and, indeed, everything which came to hand. Finally, taking pity on my despair, pretty Mlle. Hocquigny sent me about twenty thousand pounds’ weight of wood, and I then took courage again.
I had been told about some new system of keeping meat, by which the meat neither lost its juices nor its nutritive quality. I sent Mme. Guérard to the Council House, in the neighborhood of the Odéon, where such provisions were distributed, but some brute answered her that when I had removed all the Buddhistic images from my ambulance I should receive the necessary food. M. Herisson, the mayor, with some functionary holding an influential post, had been to inspect my ambulance. The important personage had requested me to have the beautiful white Virgins, which were on the mantelpieces and tables, taken away, as well as the Divine Crucified One, hanging on the wall of each room in which there were any of the wounded. I refused in a somewhat insolent and very decided way to act in accordance with the wish of my visitor; whereupon, the famous republican turned his back on me, and gave orders that I should be refused everything at the Council House. I was very determined, however, and I moved heaven and earth until I succeeded in being included for the distribution of food, in spite of the orders of the chief. It is only fair to say that the mayor was a charming man. Mme. Guérard returned after her third visit, with a child pushing a hand barrow containing ten enormous bottles of the miraculous meat. I received the precious consignment with infinite joy, for my men had been almost without meat for the last three days; and the beloved pot-au-feu was an almost necessary resource for the poor wounded fellows. On all the bottles were directions as to opening them: “Let the meat soak so many hours, etc., etc.”
Mme. Lambquin, Mme. Guérard, and I, together with all the staff of the infirmary, were soon grouped, anxiously and inquisitively, around these glass receptacles.
I told the head attendant to open the largest of the bottles, in which through the glass we could see an enormous piece of beef, surrounded by thick, muddy-looking water. The string, fastened round the rough paper which hid the cork, was cut and then, just as the man was about to put the corkscrew in, a deafening explosion was heard, and a rank odor filled the room. Everyone rushed away terrified. I called them all back, scared and disgusted as they were, and showed them the following words on the directions: “Do not be alarmed at the bad odor on opening the bottle.” Courageously, and with resignation, we took up our work once more, though we felt sick all the time from the abominable exhalation. I took the beef out and placed it on a dish that had been brought for the purpose. Five minutes later this meat turned blue, and then black, and the stench from it was so unbearable that I decided to throw it away. Mme. Lambquin was wiser, though, and more reasonable.
“No, oh, no, my dear girl,” she said; “in these times it will not do to throw meat away, even though it may be rotten. Let us put it in the glass bottle again and send it back to the Council House.” I followed her wise advice, and it was a very good thing I did, for another ambulance, installed at Boulevard de Medicis, on opening these bottles of meat had been as horrified as we were and had thrown the contents into the street. A few minutes after the crowd had gathered round in a mob and, refusing to listen to anything, had yelled out insults addressed to “the aristocrats,” “the clericals,” and “the traitors,” who were throwing good meat, intended for the sick, into the street, so that the dogs were enjoying it, while the people were starving with hunger. It was with the greatest difficulty that the wretched, mad people had been prevented from invading the ambulance, and when one of the unfortunate nurses had gone out, later on, she had been mobbed, and beaten, until she was left half dead from fright and blows. She did not want to be carried back to her own ambulance, and the druggist begged me to take her in. I kept her for a few days, in one of the boxes in the second gallery of the theater, and when she was better she asked if she might stay with me as a nurse. I granted her wish, and kept her with me afterwards as a maid.
She was a fair-haired girl, gentle and timid, and was predestined for misfortune. She was found dead in the Père Lachaise Cemetery after the skirmish between the Communists and the Versailles troop. A stray bullet had struck her in the back of the neck as she was praying at the grave of her little sister, who had died two days before from smallpox. I had taken her with me to St. Germain, where I had gone to stay during the horrors of the Commune. Poor girl! I had allowed her to go to Paris very much against my own will.
As we could not count on this preserved meat for our food, I made a contract with a knacker, who agreed to supply me, at rather a high price, with horseflesh, and until the end this was the only meat we had to eat. Well prepared and well seasoned, it was very good.
Hope had now fled from all hearts and we were living in the expectation of we knew not what. An atmosphere of misfortune seemed to hang like lead over us, and it was a sort of relief when the bombardment commenced on the 27th of December. At last, we felt that something fresh was happening. It was an era of fresh suffering. There was some stir, at any rate, for the last fortnight the fact of not knowing anything had been killing us.
On the 1st of January, 1871, we lifted our glasses to the health of the absent ones, to the repose of the dead; and the toast choked us with a lump in our throats.
Every night we used to hear the dismal cry of “Ambulance! Ambulance!” underneath the windows of the Odéon. We went down to meet the pitiful procession, and one, two, or sometimes three conveyances would be there, full of our poor, wounded soldiers. There would be ten or twelve rows of them, lying or sitting up on the straw. I said that I had one or two places, and lifting the lantern, I looked into the conveyance, and the faces would then turn slowly toward the lamp. Some of the men would close their eyes, as they were too weak to bear even that feeble light. With the help of the sergeant who accompanied the conveyance, and our attendant, one of the unfortunates would with difficulty he lifted to the narrow litter on which he was to be carried up to the hospital.
Oh, what sorrowful anguish it was for me when, on lifting the patient’s head, I discovered that it was getting heavy, oh, so heavy; and when bending over that inert face I felt that there was no longer any breath! The sergeant would then give the order to take him back, and the poor dead man was put back in his place, and another wounded man was lifted out. The other dying men would then move back a little, in order not to profane the dead. Ah, what grief it was when the sergeant said: “Do try to take one or two more in! It is a pity to drag these poor chaps about from one hospital to another. The Val-de-Grâce is full.”
“Very well, I will take two more,” I would say, and then I wondered where we should put them. We had to give up our own beds, and in this way the poor fellows were saved. Ever since the first of January, we had all three been sleeping every night at the hospital. We had some loose dressing-gowns of gray swanskin, not unlike the soldiers’ cloaks. The first of us who heard a cry or a groan sprang out of bed, and if necessary, called the other two.
On the 10th of January, Mme. Guérard and I were sitting up at night, on one of the lounges in the artistes’ foyer, awaiting the dismal cry of “Ambulance!” There had been a fierce affray at Clamart and we knew that there would be many wounded. I was telling her of my fear that the bombs, which had already reached the Museum, the Sorbonne, the Salpétrière, the Val-de-Grâce, would fall on the Odéon.
“Oh, but my dear Sarah,” said the sweet woman, “the hospital flag is waving so high above it, that there could be no mistake. If it were struck it would be purposely, and that would be abominable.”
“But Guérard,” I replied, “why should you expect these execrable enemies of ours to be better than we are ourselves? Did we not behave like savages at Berlin, in 1806?”
“But at Paris there are such admirable public monuments,” she urged.
“Well, and was not Moscow full of masterpieces? The Kremlin is one of the finest buildings in the world. That did not prevent us giving that admirable city up to pillage. Oh, no, my poor petite dame, do not deceive yourself! Armies may be Russian, German, French or Spanish, but they are armies, that is, they are beings who form an impersonal ‘whole’—a ‘whole’ that is ferocious and irresponsible. The Germans will bombard the whole of Paris, if the possibility of doing so should be offered them. You must make up your mind to that, my dear Guérard.”
I had not finished my sentence when a terrible detonation roused the sleeping neighborhood. Mme. Guérard and I had been seated opposite each other. We found ourselves standing up, close together in the middle of the room, terrified. My poor cook, her face quite white, came to me for safety. The reports continued rather frequently. The bombarding had commenced from our side that night. I went round to the wounded men, but they did not seem to be much disturbed. Only one, a boy of fifteen, whom we had surnamed “pink baby,” was sitting up in bed. When I went to him to soothe him, he showed me his little medal of the Holy Virgin.
“It is thanks to her that I was not killed,” he said. “If they would put the Holy Virgin on the ramparts of Paris the bombs would not come.”
He lay down again then, holding his little medal in his hand, and the bombarding continued until six in the morning.
“Ambulance! Ambulance!” we then heard, and Mme. Guérard and I went down.
“Here,” said the sergeant, “take this man. He is losing all his blood, and if I take him any farther he will not arrive living.”
The wounded man was put on the litter, but, as he was German, I asked the subofficer to take all his papers and give them in at the Ministry. We gave the man the place of one of the convalescents, whom I installed elsewhere. I asked him his name and he told me that it was Frantz Mayer, and that he was the first soldier of the Silesian Landwehr. He then fainted, from weakness caused by loss of blood. He soon came to himself again, with our care, and I then asked him whether he wanted anything, but he did not answer a word. I supposed that he did not speak French, and as there was no one at the hospital who spoke German, I waited until the next day to send for some one who knew his language. I must own that the poor man was not welcomed by his dormitory companions. A soldier named Fortin, who was twenty-three years of age, and a veritable child of Paris, a comical fellow, mischievous, droll, and good-natured, never ceased railing against the young German, who on his side never flinched. I went several times to Fortin, and begged him to be quiet, but it was all in vain. Every fresh outbreak of his was greeted with wild laughter, and his success put him into the gayest of humors, so that he continued, getting more and more excited all the time. The others were prevented from sleeping and he moved about wildly in his bed, bursting out into abusive language when too abrupt a movement intensified his suffering. The unfortunate fellow had had his sciatic nerve torn by a bullet, and he had to endure the most atrocious pain.
After my third fruitless appeal for silence, I ordered the two men attendants to carry him into a room where he would be alone. He sent for me, and when I went to him, promised to behave well all night long. I therefore countermanded the order I had given, and he kept his word. The following day I had Frantz Mayer carried into a room where there was a young Breton who had had his skull fractured by the bursting of a shell, and therefore needed the utmost tranquillity.
One of my friends, who spoke German very well, came to see whether the Silesian wanted anything. The wounded man’s face lighted up on hearing his own language and then, turning to me, he said:
“I understand French quite well, madame, and if I listened calmly to the horrors poured forth by your French soldier it was because I know that you cannot hold out two days longer, and I can understand his exasperation.”
“And why do you think that we cannot hold out?”
“Because I know that you are reduced to eating rats.” Dr. Duchesne had just arrived, and he was dressing the horrible wound which the patient had above his thigh.
“Well,” he said, “my friend, as soon as your fever has gone down you shall eat an excellent wing of chicken.” The German shrugged his shoulders and the doctor continued: “Meanwhile drink this, and tell me what you think of it.”
Dr. Duchesne gave him a glass of water with a little of the excellent cognac which the prefect had sent me. That was the only tisane that my soldiers took. The Silesian said no more, but he put on the reserved, circumspect manner of people who know and will not speak.
The bombardment continued, and the hospital flag certainly served as a target for our enemies, for they fired with surprising exactitude, and altered their firing directly a bomb fell a little away from the neighborhood of the Luxembourg. Thanks to this, we had more than twelve bombs one night. These dismal shells, when they burst in the air, were like the fireworks at a fête. The shining splinters then fell down black and deadly. George Boyer, who at that time was a young journalist, came to call on me at the hospital, and I told him about the terrifying splendors of the night.
“Oh, how much I should like to see all that!” he said.
“Come this evening, toward nine or ten o’clock, and you will see,” I replied.
We spent several hours at the little round window of my dressing-room, which looked out toward Châtillon. It was from there that the Germans fired the most.
We listened, in the silence of the night, to the muffled sounds coming from there, right over yonder, then there would be a light, a formidable noise in the distance, and the bomb arrived, falling in front of us or behind, bursting either in the air or on reaching its goal. Once we had only just time to draw back quickly, and even then the disturbance in the atmosphere affected us so violently that for a second we were under the impression we had been struck.
The shell had fallen just underneath my dressing-room, grazing the cornice, which it dragged down in its fall to the ground, and bursting there feebly. But what was our amazement to see a little crowd of children swoop down on the burning pieces, just like a lot of sparrows on fresh manure when the carriage has passed! The little vagabonds were quarreling over the débris of these engines of warfare. I wondered what they could possibly do with them.
“Oh, there is not much mystery about it!” said Boyer; “these little starving urchins will sell them.”
This proved to be true. One of the men attendants, whom I sent to find out, brought back with him a child of about ten years old.
“What are you going to do with that, my little man?” I asked him, picking up the piece of shell, which was warm and still dangerous, by the edge where it had burst.
“I am going to sell it,” he replied.
“What for?”
“To buy my turn in the queue, when the meat is being distributed.”
“But you risk your life, my poor child. Sometimes the shells come quickly, one after the other. Where were you when this one fell?”
“Lying down on the stone of the wall that supports the iron railings.” He pointed across to the Luxembourg gardens, opposite the artistes’ entrance to the Odéon.
We bought up all the débris that the child had, without attempting to give him advice which might have sounded wise. What was the use of preaching wisdom to this poor little creature who heard of nothing but massacres, fire, revenge, retaliation and all the rest of it, for the sake of honor, for the sake of religion, for the sake of right! And then, too, how was it possible to keep out of the way? All the people living in the Faubourg St. Germain were liable to be blown to pieces, as the enemy, very luckily, could only bombard Paris on that side and not everywhere even there. No, we were certainly in the most dangerous neighborhood.
One day Baron Larrey came to see Frantz Mayer, who was very ill. He wrote a prescription, which a young errand boy was told to wait for, and bring back very, very quickly. As the boy was rather given to loitering, I went to the window. His name was Victor, but we called him Toto. The druggist lived at the corner of the Place Medicis. It was then six o’clock in the evening. Toto looked up, and on seeing me, he began to laugh and jump as he hurried to the druggist’s. He had only five or six more yards to go, and as he turned round to look up at my window, I clapped my hands and called out: “Good, be back soon!” Alas! Before the poor boy could open his mouth to reply, he was cut in two by a shell which had just fallen. It did not burst, but bounced a yard high, and then struck poor Toto right in the middle of the chest. I uttered such a shriek that everyone came rushing to me. I could not speak, but pushed everyone aside and rushed downstairs, beckoning for some one to come with me.
“A litter—the boy—the druggist’s,” I managed to articulate.
Ah, what a horror, what an awful horror! When we reached the poor child, his intestines were all over the ground, his chest, and his poor little red, chubby face had the flesh entirely taken off. He had neither eyes, nose, nor mouth, nothing, nothing but some hair, at the end of a shapeless bleeding mass, a yard away from his body. And it was as though a tiger’s two claws had opened the body and emptied it with fury and a refinement of cruelty, leaving nothing but the poor little skeleton.
Baron Larrey, who was the best of men, turned slightly pale at this sight. He saw many such sights certainly, but this poor little fellow was a holocaust which had been terribly mutilated. Ah, the injustice, the infamy of war! Will the much dreamed-of time never come, when wars are no longer possible, when the monarch who wants war will be dethroned and imprisoned as a malefactor? Will the time never come when there will be a cosmopolitan council, where the wise man of every country will represent his nation, and where the rights of humanity will be discussed and respected! So many men think as I do. So many women talk as I do, and yet nothing is done.
A man, whom I liked very much, was engaged in certain inventions for balloons. To find out how to steer balloons means, for me, finding out how to realize my dream, namely, to fly in the air, to approach the sky, and have under one’s feet the moist downlike clouds. Ah, how interested I was in my friend’s researches! One day, though, he came to me very much excited with a new discovery.
“I have discovered something about which I am wild with delight!” he said. He then began to explain to me that his balloon would be able to carry inflammable matter without the least danger, thanks to this, and thanks to that.
“But what for?” I asked, bewildered by his explanations and half crazy with so many technical words.
“What for?” he repeated; “why, for war!” he replied. “We shall be able to fire, and to throw terrible bombs to a distance of a thousand, twelve hundred, and even fifteen hundred yards, and it would be impossible for us to be harmed at such a distance. My balloon, thanks to a substance which is my invention, with which the covering would be coated, would have nothing to fear from fire nor yet from gas.”
“I do not want to know anything more about you or your invention,” I said, interrupting him brusquely. “I thought you were a humane savant, and you are a wild beast. Your researches were in connection with the most beautiful manifestation of human genius, with those fêtes of the skies which I loved so dearly. You want to transform these now into cowardly attacks turned against the earth. You horrify me! Do go!”
With this I left my friend to himself and his cruel invention, ashamed for a moment. His efforts have not succeeded, though, according to his wishes.
The remains of the poor lad were put into a small coffin, and Mme. Guérard and I followed the pauper’s hearse to the grave. The morning was so cold that the driver had to stop and take a glass of hot wine, as otherwise he might have died of congestion. We were alone in the carriage, for the boy had been brought up by his grandmother who could not walk at all, and who knitted vests and stockings. It was by going to order some vests and socks for my men that I had made the acquaintance of Mère Tricottin, as she was called. At her request I had engaged her grandson, Victor Durieux, as an errand boy, and the poor old woman had been so grateful that I did not dare go now to tell her of his death. My petite dame went for me to the Rue de Vaurigard, where the old woman lived. As soon as Mme. Guérard arrived, the poor grandmother could see by her sad face that something had happened.
“Bon Dieu! my dear lady, is the poor little maigrotte dead?”
This was her name for me. Mme. Guérard then told her, as gently as possible, the sad news. The old woman took off her spectacles, looked at Mme. Guérard, wiped them and put them on her nose again. She then began to grumble violently about her son, the father of the dead boy. He had taken up with some low girl, by whom he had had this child, and she had always foreseen that misfortune would come upon them through it. She continued in this strain, not sorrowing for the poor boy, but abusing her son, who was a soldier in the Army of the Loire. Although the grandmother seemed to feel so little grief, I went to see her after the funeral.
“It is all over, Mme. Durieux,” I said, “but I have secured the grave for a period of five years for the poor boy.”
She turned toward me, quite comic in her vexation.
“What madness!” she exclaimed; “now that he’s with the bon Dieu he won’t want for anything. It would have been better to have taken a bit of land that would have brought something in. Dead folks don’t make vegetables grow.”
This outburst was so terribly logical that, in spite of the odious brutality of it, I yielded to Mère Tricottin’s desire, and gave her the same present I had given to the boy. They should each have their bit of land, the child who had had a right to a longer life should sleep his eternal sleep in his, while the old woman could wrest from hers what fruits she might.
I returned to the ambulance sad and unnerved. A joyful surprise was awaiting me. A friend of mine was there, holding in his hand a very small piece of tissue paper, on which were the following two lines in my mother’s handwriting: “We are all very well and at Hombourg.” I was furious on reading this. At Hombourg! All my family at Hombourg, settling down tranquilly in the enemy’s country! I racked my brains to think by what extraordinary combination my mother had gone to Hombourg. I knew that my pretty Aunt Rosine had a friend there, with whom she stayed every year, for she always went for two months to Hombourg, two months to Baden-Baden, and a month to Spa, as she was the greatest gambler that the bon Dieu ever created. Anyhow, those who were so dear to me were all well, and that was the principal thing. But I was nevertheless annoyed with my mother for going to Hombourg.
I heartily thanked the friend who had brought me the little slip of paper. It was sent to me by the American Minister, who had put himself to no end of trouble in order to give help and consolation to the Parisians. I then gave him a few lines for my mother, in case he should be able to send them to her.
The bombardment of Paris continued. One night the Brothers from the Ecole Chrétienne came to ask us for conveyances and help, in order to collect the dead on the Châtillon Plateau. I let them have my two conveyances, and I went with them to the battlefield. Ah, what a horrible remembrance! It was like a scene from Dante! It was an icy cold night and we could scarcely get along. Finally, by the light of torches and lanterns we saw that we had arrived. I got out of the vehicle with the infirmary attendant and his assistant. We had to move slowly, as at every step we trod upon the dying or the dead. We passed along murmuring: “Ambulance! Ambulance!” When we heard a groan we turned our steps in the direction whence it came. Ah, the first man that I found in this way! He was half lying down, his body supported by a heap of dead. I raised my lantern to look at his face and found that his ear and part of his jaw had been blown off. Great clots of blood, coagulated by the cold, hung from his lower jaw. There was a wild look in his eyes. I took a wisp of straw, dipped it in my flask, drew up a few drops of brandy and blew them into the poor fellow’s mouth between his teeth. I repeated this three or four times. A little life then came back to him and we took him away in one of the vehicles. The same thing was done for the others. Some of them could drink from the flask, which made our work shorter. One of these unfortunate men was frightful to look at. A shell had taken all the clothes from the upper part of his body, with the exception of two ragged sleeves, which hung from the arms at the shoulders. There was no trace of a wound, but his poor body was marked all over with great black patches, and the blood was oozing slowly from the corners of his mouth. I went nearer to him, for it seemed to me that he was breathing. I had a few drops of the vivifying cordial given to him, and he then half opened his eyes and said: “Thank you.” He was lifted into the conveyance, but the poor fellow died from a hemorrhage, covering all the other wounded men with a stream of dark blood.
Daylight gradually began to appear, a misty, dull dawn. The lanterns had burned out, but we could now distinguish each other. There were about a hundred persons there: Sisters of Charity, military and civil men-nurses, the Brothers from the Ecole Chrétienne, other priests and a few ladies who like myself had given themselves up, heart and soul, to the service of the wounded.
The sight was still more dismal by daylight, for all that the night had hidden in its shadows appeared then in the tardy, wan light of that January morning.
There were so many wounded that it was impossible to transport them all, and I sobbed at the thought of my helplessness. Other vehicles kept arriving, but there were so many wounded, so very many. Many of those who had only slight wounds had died of cold.
On returning to the hospital I met one of my friends at the door. He was a naval officer, and he had brought me a sailor who had been wounded at the Fort of Ivry. He had been shot below the right eye. He was entered as Désiré Bloas, boatswain’s mate, aged twenty-seven. He was a magnificent fellow, very frank looking, and a man of few words.
As soon as he was in bed, Dr. Duchesne sent for a barber to shave him, as his bushy whiskers had been ravaged by a bullet that had lodged itself in the salivary gland, carrying with it hair and flesh into the wound. The surgeon took up his pincers to extract the pieces of flesh which had stopped up the opening of the wound. He then had to take some very fine pincers to extract the hairs which were mixed up inextricably in the torn mass of flesh. When the barber laid his razor very gently near the wound, the unfortunate man turned livid, and an oath escaped his lips. He immediately glanced at me and muttered: “Pardon, mademoiselle.” I was very young, but I appeared much younger than my age. I looked like a very young girl, in fact. I was holding the poor fellow’s hand in mine and trying to comfort him with the hundreds of consoling words that spring from a woman’s heart to her lips, when she has to soothe moral or physical suffering.
“Ah, mademoiselle,” said poor Bloas, when the wound was finally dressed, “you gave me courage.”
When he was more easy I asked him if he would like something to eat.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Well, my boy, would you like cheese, soup, or sweets?” asked Mme. Lambquin.
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