“My darling: I am in hospital, very ill, very ill. Will you not come and see me? It would give me so much pleasure!
The Captain grew pale and, moved with pity, declared:
“It’s too bad! The poor girl! I will go there as soon as I have had lunch.”
And during the whole time at the table, he told the officers that Irma was in hospital, and that he, by God, was going to get her out. It must be the fault of those unspeakable Prussians. She had doubtless found herself alone without a sou, broken down with misery, for they must certainly have stolen her furniture.
“Ah! the dirty swine!”
Everybody listened with great excitement. Scarcely had he slipped his napkin in his wooden ring, when he rose and, taking his sword from the peg, and thrusting out his chest to make his waist thin, hooked his belt and set out with hurried step to the city hospital.
But entrance to the hospital building, where he expected to enter immediately, was sharply refused him, and he was obliged to find his Colonel and explain his case to him in order to get a word from him to the director.
This man, after having kept the handsome Captain waiting some time in his anteroom, gave him an authorized pass and a cold and disapproving greeting.
Inside the door he felt himself constrained in this asylum of misery and suffering and death. A boy in the service showed him the way. He walked upon tiptoe, that he might make no noise, through the long corridors, where floated a musty odour of illness and medicines. From time to time a murmur of voices alone disturbed the silence of the hospital.
At times, through an open door, the Captain perceived a dormitory, with its rows of beds whose clothes were raised by the forms of bodies. Some convalescents were seated in chairs at the foot of their beds, sewing, and clothed in the uniform grey cloth dress with white cap.
His guide suddenly stopped before one of these corridors filled with patients. He read on the door, in large letters: “Syphilis.” The Captain started; then he felt that he was blushing. An attendant was preparing some medicine at a little wooden table at the door.
“I will show you,” said she, “it is bed 29.”
And she walked ahead of the officer. She indicated a bed: “There it is.”
There was nothing to be seen but a bundle of bedclothes. Even the head was concealed under the coverlet. Everywhere faces were to be seen on the beds, pale faces, astonished at the sight of a uniform, the faces of women, young women and old women, but all seemingly plain and common in the humble, regulation garb.
The Captain, very much disturbed, carrying his sword in one hand and his cap in the other, murmured:
“Irma.”
There was a sudden motion in the bed and the face of his mistress appeared, but so changed, so tired, so thin, that he would scarcely have known it.
She gasped, overcome by emotion, and then said:
“Albert!—Albert! It is you! Oh! I am so glad—so glad.” And the tears ran down her cheeks.
The attendant brought a chair. “Won’t you sit down, sir?” she said.
He sat down and looked at the pale, wretched countenance, so little like that of the beautiful, fresh girl he had left. Finally he said:
“What is the matter with you?”
She replied, weeping: “You know well enough, it is written on the door.” And she hid her eyes under the edge of the bedclothes.
Dismayed and ashamed, he continued: “How did you catch it, my poor girl?”
She answered: “It was those beasts of Prussians. They took me almost by force and then poisoned me.”
He found nothing to add. He looked at her and kept turning his cap around on his knees.
The other patients gazed at him, and he believed that he detected an odour of putrefaction, of contaminated flesh, in this corridor full of girls tainted with this ignoble, terrible malady.
She murmured: “I do not believe that I shall recover. The doctor says it is very serious.”
Then she noticed the cross upon the officer’s breast and cried:
“Oh! you have been decorated; now I am happy. How contented I am! If I could only embrace you!”
A shiver of fear and disgust ran through the Captain at the thought of this kiss. He had a desire to make his escape, to be in the clear air and never see this woman again. He remained, however, not knowing how to say goodbye, and finally stammered:
“You took no care of yourself, then.”
A flame flashed in Irma’s eyes: “No, the desire to avenge myself came to me when I should have broken away from it. And I poisoned them too, all, all that I could. As long as there were any of them in Rouen, I had no thought for myself.”
He declared, in a constrained tone in which there was a little note of gaiety: “So far, you have done some good.”
Getting animated, and her cheekbones getting red, she answered:
“Oh! yes, there will more than one of them die from my fault. I tell you I had my revenge.”
Again he said: “So much the better.” Then rising, he added: “Well, I must leave you now, because I have only time to meet my appointment with the Colonel—”
She showed much emotion, crying out: “Already! You leave me already! And you have scarcely arrived!”
But he wished to go at any cost, and said:
“But you see that I came immediately; and it is absolutely necessary for me to be at the Colonel’s at four o’clock.”
She asked: “Is it still Colonel Prune?”
“Still Colonel Prune. He was twice wounded.”
She continued: “And your comrades? Have some of them been killed?”
“Yes. Saint-Timon, Savagnat, Poli, Saprival, Robert, de Courson, Pasafil, Santal, Caravan, and Poivrin are dead. Sahel had an arm carried off and Courvoisin a leg crushed. Paquet lost his right eye.”
She listened, much interested. Then suddenly she stammered:
“Will you kiss me, say, before you
