Meantime, there was no corner to be found in which a painful scene could be spared me. I had taken refuge on the platform, and there I was brought face to face with the most grievous of all sights, the arrival of a long train, all whose carriages were full of wounded, and the disembarkation of the latter. The less seriously wounded got out by themselves, and managed to get themselves forward; but most had to be supported, or even carried altogether. The available stretchers were at once occupied, and the remaining patients had to wait till the bearers returned, lying on the floor. Before my feet, at the spot where I was sitting on a box, they laid a man who made, without cessation, a continuous gurgling sound. I bent down to speak a word of sympathy to him, but I started back in horror, and covered my face with both hands. The impression on me had been too fearful. It was no longer a human countenance—the lower jaw shot away, one eye welling out, and, added to that, a stifling reek of blood and corruption. I should have liked to jump up and run away, but I was deadly sick, and my head fell back against the wall behind me. “Oh what a cowardly, feeble creature I am,” I said, reproaching myself; “what have I to do in these abodes of misery, where I can do nothing, nothing, to help, and am exposed to such disgust?” Only the thought of Frederick rallied me again. Yes, for him, even if he were in the condition of the poor wretch at my feet, I could bear anything. I would still embrace and kiss him, and all disgust, all horror would be drowned in that all-conquering feeling—love. “Frederick, my Frederick, I am coming.” I repeated half-aloud this fixed thought of mine which had seized me at the time I read Bresser’s letter, and had never quitted me.
A fearful notion passed through my brain—what if this man should be Frederick? I collected all my forces, and looked at him again. No, it was not he.
The anxious hour of waiting did, however, come to an end. They had carried off the poor gurgling fellow. “Lay him on the bench there,” I heard the regimental doctor order; “he is not to be brought back into hospital. He is already three parts dead.” And yet he must surely have still understood the words, this three-parts-dead man; for with a despairing gesture he raised both his hands to heaven.
Now I was sitting in a carriage with the two physicians and four sisters of mercy. It was stiflingly hot, and the carriage was filled with the smell of the hospital and sacristy—carbolic acid and incense. I was unspeakably ill. I leaned back in my corner, and shut my eyes.
The train began to move. That is just the time when every traveller brings before his mind’s eye the object towards which he is being taken. I had often before travelled over the same ground; and then there lay before me a visit to a château full of guests, or a pleasant bathing-place—my wedding-tour, a blessed memory, was made on this same route, to meet with a brilliant and loving reception in the metropolis of “Prussia.” What a different sound that last word has assumed since then! And today? What is our object today? A battlefield and the hospitals round it—the abodes of death and suffering. I shuddered—
“My dear lady,” said one of the physicians, “I think you are ill yourself. You look so pale and so suffering.”
I looked up; the speaker had a friendly, youthful appearance. I guessed that this was his first service on being recently promoted to the rank of surgeon. It was good of him to devote his first service to this dangerous and laborious duty! I felt grateful to these men who were sitting in the carriage with me for the relief which they were in the act of bringing to the sufferers. And to the self-sacrificing sisters—really of mercy—I paid heartfelt admiration and thanks. Yet what was it that each of these good men had to bestow? An ounce of help for 1,000 hundredweights of need. These courageous nuns must, I thought, bear in their hearts for all men that overmastering love which filled mine for my own husband; as I had felt just now that if the fearfully disfigured and repulsive soldier who was gurgling at my feet had been my husband, all my repulsion would have vanished, so these women must have felt towards every brother-man, and surely through the power of a higher love—that for their chosen bridegroom, Christ. But alas! here also these noble women brought an ounce only—one ounce of love to a place where 1,000 hundredweights of hatred were raging!
“No, doctor,” I replied to the sympathetic question of the young physician. “I am not ill, only a little exhausted.”
The staff-surgeon now joined in the conversation.
“Your husband, madam, as Baron S⸺ told me, was wounded at Königgrätz, and you are travelling thither to nurse him. Do you know in which of the villages around he is lying?”
No, I did not know.
“My destination is Königinhof,” I replied. “There a physician awaits me who is a friend of mine—Dr. Bresser.”
“I know him. He was with me when we made a three days’ examination of the field of battle.”
“Examined the field of battle!” I repeated with a shudder. “Let us hear.”
“Yes, yes, doctor, let us hear,” begged one of the nuns. “Our service may bring us into the position of helping at an examination of the kind.”
So the regimental surgeon began his narration. Of course I cannot give the exact words of his description; and, again, he did not speak in a single flow of words, but with frequent interruptions, and almost with reluctance,
