"It seems like he is very sick, my son is, very, very
sick. . . And so I came to see if he was not around
here, Doctor."
"What's your name?"
"My name is Riboulleau."
"Riboulleau. . . . Riboulleau! . . . That may be. . . . look in that pile there."
The attendant who was broiling his pudding turned his head.
"Riboulleau," he said, "why he has been dead three days already. . ."
"What is that you are saying?" cried the peasant woman whose sunburned face suddenly became pallid. "Where did he die? . . . Why did he die, my little darling boy."
The adjutant intervened, and rudely pushing the old woman toward the door, shouted:
"Go on, go on, no scenes around here! Well, he is dead—and that is all there is to it."
"My little darling boy! My little darling boy!" wailed the old woman in a heart-breaking manner.
I walked away with a heavy heart and felt so discouraged that I was asking myself whether it was not better to put an end to it all at once by hanging myself on the branch of a tree or by blowing my brains out with the gun. While I was going to my tent, stumbling on the way, I was hardly paying any attention to the little soldier who, having stopped at the foot of a pine tree, had opened his abscess with his knife himself, and, pale, with sweat drops rolling all over his forehead, was bandaging his bleeding wound.
In the morning I felt a great deal better than I thought I would. I was relieved of all work, and after having greased my rifle which became rusted in the rain, I enjoyed a few hours of rest. Stretched out on my blanket, with my body torpid in delicious half
