for me, I'm
off," carefully rolling a bandage the while, which he did with great
dexterity.

His mixture of terror and swagger was a perpetual entertainment to us.
One night, a hand-grenade fell out of the pocket of one of the wounded.
In defiance of orders, Tailleur, who knew nothing at all about the
handling of such things, turned it over and examined it for some time,
with comic curiosity and distrust.

One day a pig intended for our consumption was killed in the pig-sty by
fragments of shell. We ate it, and the finding by one of the orderlies
of some bits of metal in his portion of meat gave occasion for a great
many jests.

For a fortnight we were unable to go beyond the hospital enclosure.
Our longest expedition was to the piece of waste ground which had been
allotted to us for a burial ground, a domain the shells were always
threatening to plough up. This graveyard increased considerably. As it
takes a man eight hours to dig a grave for his brother man, one had to
set a numerous gang to work all day, to ensure a place for each corpse.

Sometimes we went into the wooden shed which served as our mortuary.
Pere Duval, the oldest of our orderlies, sewed there all day, making
shrouds of coarse linen for "his dead."

They were laid in the earth carefully, side by side, their feet
together, their hands crossed on their breasts, when indeed they still
possessed hands and feet.... Duval also looked after the human debris,
and gave it decent sepulture.

Thus our function was not only to tend the living, but also to honour
the dead. The care of what was magniloquently termed their "estate" fell
to our manager, S----. It was he who put into a little canvas bag all
the papers and small possessions found on the victims. He devoted days
and nights to a kind of funereal bureaucracy, inevitable even under the
fire of the enemy. His occupation, moreover, was not exempt from moral
difficulties. Thus he found in the pocket of one dead man a woman's card
which it was impossible to send on to his family, and in another case, a
collection of songs of such a nature that after due deliberation it was
decided to burn them.

Let us purify the memories of our martyrs!

We had several German wounded to attend. One of these, whose leg I had
to take off, overwhelmed me with thanks in his native tongue; he had
lain for six days on ground over which artillery played unceasingly, and
contemplated his return to life and the care bestowed