time to lose. Every hour of delay exhausts our man further. A few days
more, and there will be no choice open to him: only death, after a long
ordeal....

He repeats:

"I am not afraid, but I would rather die."

Then I talk to him as if I were the advocate of Life. Who gave me this
right? Who gave me eloquence? The things I said were just the right
things, and they came so readily that now and then I was afraid of
holding out so sure a promise of a life I am not certain I can preserve,
of guaranteeing a future that is not in man's hands.

Gradually, I feel his resistance weakening. There is something in
Leglise which involuntarily sides with me and pleads with me. There
are moments when he does not know what to say, and formulates trivial
objections, just because there are others so much weightier.

"I live with my mother," he says. "I am twenty years old. What work is
there for a cripple? Ought I to live to suffer poverty and misery?"

"Leglise, all France owes you too much, she would blush not to pay her
debt."

And I promise again, in the name of our country, sure that she will
never fall short of what I undertake for her. The whole French nation is
behind me at this moment, silently ratifying my promise.

We are at the edge of the terrace; evening has come. I hold his burning
wrist in which the feeble pulse beats with exhausted fury. The night
is so beautiful, so beautiful! Rockets rise above the hills, and fall
slowly bathing the horizon in silvery rays. The lightning of the guns
flashes furtively, like a winking eye. In spite of all this, in spite of
war, the night is like waters dark and divine. Leglise breathes it in to
his wasted breast in long draughts, and says:

"Oh, I don't know, I don't know!... Wait another day, please,
please...."

We waited three whole days, and then Leglise gave in. "Well, do what you
must. Do what you like."

On the morning of the operation, he asked to be carried down to the ward
by the steps into the park. I went with him, and I saw him looking at
all things round him, as if taking them to witness.

If only, only it is not too late!

Again he was laid on the table. Again we cut through flesh and bones.
The second leg was amputated at the thigh.

I took him in my arms to lay him on his bed, and he was so light, so
light....

This time when he woke he asked no question. But I saw his hands groping
to feel where his body ended.

A few days have passed since the o