The next morning a new catastrophe; Pierre de Prans, otherwise Pierrot, he who had brought the news of Jean's death, had been brought to Val-de-Grâce hospital in a very alarming condition. His orderly, a fine fellow, who was wounded at the same time, was as good as dead. Pierrot had a bullet in the breast, one lung laid bare, and a broken arm. His orderly had stanched his wounds under a violent bombardment, filling up the enormous cavity with bandages snatched from the dead who surrounded them, then both had remained for six hours, their heads in a vile-smelling hole under a paving-stone, their bodies hidden by bushes. In the course of the night, hearing the French language spoken, they had kicked with their feet and the stretcher-bearers had drawn them out, both still living. The narrative of these particulars produced a worse effect upon Odette than tidings of death; the more as some one had the lightness to say in her presence: "Much better to be shot dead at an unexpected moment than to endure such long and cruel agony." "That is a fine idea!" retorted Odette. "Much better to be alive than dead." Notwithstanding the sadness of these visits of friends when there was always some new death to weep for, deaths which had occurred under the most frightful circumstances, Odette felt that no other sorrow was equal to her sorrow; and she detested them all, not as losses hateful to endure, not as making part of a national calamity the like of which had never been before, but as unwelcome events intruding themselves between her and her own grief. She desired to be alone with her sorrow, and she resolved henceforth to know nothing of all the rest. One idea possessed her during several days: to see the place where Jean lay buried. Oh! if she could also see that where he received his death-blow! She appealed to three or four influential persons of her acquaintance, hung over the telephone. What she asked was to the last degree impossible. Word came to her from the Minister that it would be easier for her to go to Berlin, passing through Switzerland after procuring the necessary papers, than to reach her husband's tomb, near as it was. Then it seemed to her that the government, even more than death, had robbed her of her husband by means never practised before, the refined cruelty of which had been invented for her alone. V Her old friend, La Villaumer, had come to make her a brief visit of condolence. He was the only man of their former group of intimates left in Paris, because of his years. Now he came to see her again.