Stretched out motionless on his stretcher, he looked like a corpse, whose eyes had not been properly closed, indifferent to all around him. Then, when we had lifted him, and with such care, he began to scream and cry out. A doctor should have dressed his wounds at the front, but they had not been done for four days. On being lifted up, his shattered leg, cramped and asleep, gave him excruciating pain, and his whole body writhed as though it had been on the rack. I had noticed this young Marseillais, with his child's face among all the other wounded men, and I had been attracted by his youth and his sufferings. I went up to his bed. I leant over him, and said with the instinctive gentleness which compassion inspires one with: "You are suffering, my child?" Without answering, he withdrew his burning hand from mine, and put his arm round my neck. "Father," he said, in a weak voice, "Father, am I going to die?" What answer could I make? I didn't know; besides, even when one is sure, one can't say it out brutally like that. Then the poor boy guessed I had misunderstood him, and his proud, brave soul wished to keep the glory of the soldier, who has braved danger without flinching. Now he defied death and found strength to smile. "Oh! I'm not a bit afraid, but I wanted to ask you...." He stopped and began to cry. He drew me still closer to him. He was no coward, this young trooper. One felt it instinctively. I knew that this lad who had lived through the bloody epopee, was not to be approached by maddening fear. His heart was stamped with virility. A month's campaign had made of him an old soldier who had gone through tragic adventures. "No, I'm not afraid. I've seen so many die all around me that I don't care a scrap whether I live or die. But ... It's my mother, I'm thinking of. If I die, she won't understand, and it will kill her too." Little by little the sighs and moans had ceased in the darkened ward. Only his solemn words broke the silence. Everything else faded away at the meeting of the two beings, at that supreme moment, more than mere men, the soldier and the priest, to whom France had confided the guarding of her frontiers and the treasure of her ideal. Then, knowing how nature rebounds, and trusting to the hardy stock from which he sprang, I dared to assure him that he was not mortally wounded. "No, my child, you won't die, you are too young to die." A sceptical smile stopped me. "And what about those others 'là-bas?'" All the same, I don't believe that we shall not be able to save the poor, mangled body. The head doctor, whose diagnosis is never wrong, said only a little while ago that he would save him. "I tell you, you will recover." IV--THE STORY FROM HIS DYING LIPS The poor fellow looked at me, and this time believed me. He raised himself a little, made the sign of the cross, and whispered-- "You must pray for me."