ith copious
tears.

This change is a small matter; but in the lives of the sick, there are
no small things.

Lerondeau will weep for the old zinc fragment for two days, and it will
be a long time before he ceases to look distrustfully at the new trough,
and to criticise it in those minute and bitter terms which only a
connoisseur can understand or invent.

Carre, on the other hand, cannot succeed in carrying along his body by
the generous impulse of his soul. Everything about him save his eyes and
his liquid voice foreshadow the corpse. Throughout the winter days
and the long sleepless nights, he looks as if he were dragging along a
derelict.

He strains at it... with his poignant songs and his brave words which
falter now, and often die away in a moan.

I had to do his dressing in the presence of Marie. The amount of work to
be got through, and the cramped quarters made this necessary. Marie was
grave and attentive as if he were taking a lesson, and, indeed, it was a
lesson in patience and courage. But all at once, the teacher broke down.
In the middle of the dressing, Carre opened his lips, and in spite of
himself, began to complain without restraint or measure, giving up the
struggle in despair.

Lerondeau listened, anxious and uneasy; and Carre, knowing that Marie
was listening, continued to lament, like one who has lost all sense of
shame.

Lerondeau called me by a motion of his eyelids. He said:

"Carre!..."

And he added:

"I saw his slough. Lord! he is bad."

Lerondeau has a good memory for medical terms. Yes, he saw Carre's
slough. He himself has the like on his posterior and on his heel; but
the tear that trembles in the corner of his eye is certainly for Carre.

And then, he knows, he feels that HIS wounds are going to heal.

But it is bad for Marie to hear another complaining before his own turn.

He comes to the table very ill-disposed. His nerves have been shaken and
are unusually irritable.

At the first movement, he begins with sighs and those "Poor devils!"
which are his artless and habitual expressions of self-pity. And then,
all at once, he begins to scream, as I had not heard him scream for a
long time. He screams in a sort of frenzy, opening his mouth widely, and
shrieking with all the strength of his lungs, and with all the strength
of his face, it would seem, for it is flushed and bathed in sweat.
He screams unreasonably at the lightest touch, in an incoherent and
disorderly f