I said, "They gave you a good breakfast?"
"And your little package, for lunch in the train?"
"You have all the money you need, you are sure, my child?"
"Oh, yes, madame, much more than I need. I still have that twenty francs."
"You promise to let me know if I can do anything for you?"
"And you will take care of yourself, please, Pérot."
The clock struck once, the first quarter hour past five.
"You would not have liked me to come to the train, Pérot?"
"No, madame, because I should have cried; I am so stupid, madame."
"I would have cried too. And so, my child--until a less sad day."
This morning, at the hospital, one of the Verdun men came up from the convalescent ward downstairs, where he was sent when they evacuated for the Somme, to say good-bye to us. He is well enough, and he is going back. He is one of the older men, one of those who have the look of worrying about wives and babies. He has been twice wounded. The first was a bad wound; he had taken long to get over it in some hospital of the provinces, and to be able to go back and be wounded again. Now he is going back for the third time.
I remember his having told me, at first, when he was quite ill and talked with fever, that he was terribly afraid of Verdun. He said he did not mind what they did with him if only they did not send him back to Verdun. He said he was afraid of the bayonet. He could kill with the gun, he said, but not with the bayonet. He said he stood paralyzed when it was the moment to strike with the bayonet, and could not strike.
It was after he left my ward that his wife had come up from the Limousin, and brought the two little girls to visit him. I never saw her, but I remember how happy he was. He told me his wife could not stay long because she had to go back and take care of the cows. They had two cows, he said.
Now he bade good-bye to Madame Marthe, who was washing her hands with sublimé after a dressing, and who gave him a sharp red elbow to shake.
He said good-bye to the men in the ward, each one in turn, and stood a minute looking at his old place and said, "One was well off there."
It was very hot in the ward, and there were flies buzzing.
I thought: To be going back to that, when one knows it already; to be going back to that, when one has no longer youth's élan and carelessness; when one has to worry over labour and poverty left behind.