"Have you any children?"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"Three."

The conversation languishes. I get up and say: "Good-bye till to-morrow,
Gregoire."

"Ah! you will hurt me again to-morrow."

I reassure him, or at least I try to reassure him. Then, that I may not
go away leaving a bad impression, I ask:

"How did you get wounded?"

"Well, down there in the plain, with the others...."

That is all. I go away. Gregoire's eyes follow me for a moment, and I
cannot even say whether he is pleased or annoyed by my visit.

Good-bye, poor Gregoire. I cross the ward and go to sit down by Auger.

Auger is busy writing up his "book."

It is a big ledger some one has given him, in which he notes the
important events of his life.

Auger writes a round schoolboy hand. In fact, he can just write
sufficiently well for his needs, I might almost say for his pleasure.

"Would you care to look at my book?" he says, and he hands it to me with
the air of a man who has no secrets.

Auger receives many letters, and he copies them out carefully,
especially when they are fine letters, full of generous sentiments. His
lieutenant, for instance, wrote him a remarkable letter.

He also copies into his book the letters he writes to his wife and his
little girl. Then he notes the incidents of the day: "Wound dressed at
10 o'clock. The pus is diminishing. After dinner Madame la Princesse
Moreau paid us a visit, and distributed caps all round; I got a fine
green one. The little chap who had such a bad wound in the belly died at
2 o'clock...."

Auger closes his book and puts it back under his bolster.

He has a face that it does one good to look at. His complexion is warm
and fresh; his hair stiff and rather curly. He has a youthful moustache,
a well-shaped chin, with a lively dimple in the middle, and eyes which
seem to be looking out on a smiling landscape, gay with sunshine and
running waters.

"I am getting on splendidly," he says with great satisfaction. "Would
you like to see Mariette?"

He lifts up the sheet, and I see the apparatus in which we have placed
the stump of his leg. It makes a kind of big white doll, which he takes
in both hands with a laugh, and to which he has given the playful name
of "Mariette."

Auger was a sapper in the Engineers. A shell broke his thigh and tore
off his foot. But as the foot was still hanging by a strip of flesh,
Auger took out his pocket-knife, and got rid of it. Then he said to his
terror-st