I remember, above all, a youth twenty years old, who had such a complicated wound in the chest that it is indescribable. I held the poor, inert body while the surgeon lay wide open the thorax. "Take him back," said the surgeon, "and be careful." I did so. Then from the deep, bleeding wound the whole chest emptied itself, as one empties a bucket of I don't know what unnamable liquid. The surgeon approached then, and leaning over the now visible palpitating lung murmured: "What can be done? It will only begin again." However, he did find out what could be done. He had him put back in his bed--he was still unconscious. Sitting near him, filled with anxiety I waited his awakening. I wanted him to be saved, that child! While he was being chloroformed a few minutes before, while he was holding my hand without saying a word, there was in his look, before his eyes closed, such a gentle desire to live, such a prayer for protection--such confidence in the infinite aid I gave him. If he died I should have felt myself guilty--I don't know of what. He awoke--looked at me and smiled. He then murmured: "Why are you so good to us, madame? We are not near to you." To this dying child, to give him back his life, it was necessary I should explain to him his glory. I said: "Not near, my boy? Why, understand then what I owe you! If the enemy has not entered our Paris--if Notre Dame is intact--if I, myself, am living--it is because you gave your blood for us. But that is not all. When you fight for France you do not only fight for your country, you do not only save your native land; you save an ideal, an ideal supreme, universal. In helping all that is pure and beautiful in the world you save the liberty of peoples, the liberty of the soul. You say to each one of us 'the yoke that weighs you down I shall help you to cast off.' "You do not understand me well, my boy. But see--you must live. Later in the eternal books of history you will learn the meaning of the blood you have given. You must live! _You must live!_ Years from now your little children will look at you with eyes of love and admiration because you were a soldier in the great war. They will know the meaning of the medal shining on your chest, and for generations they will be proud of the honour of their name. You must live, my dear boy!" As I spoke something wonderful illuminated the youth's eyes. "Oh, I shall live, madame. One only has to will it. I shall live." He is saved! I do not know why I stopped to recount the agony and resurrection of that child, because almost all of them are divinely alike--childlike, confident, smiling. Another had had a whole leg amputated--a young man of twenty-two, with a charming face. Doubtless he had already been loved by some pretty girl. At last the day came when for the first time he was to get out of bed and try to walk with crutches. I dreaded that moment. I expected complaints. I already had made up my consoling arguments.