With dangling
arms, he submits in silence. But the attendant abandons him, looks
on the ground and exclaims sonorously, "What the--? Eh, come now,
my friend, are you cracked? There's manners for you, to lie down on
the top of a patient!" And his capacious hand disengages a second
limp body on which the first had extended himself as on a mattress;
while the mannikin with the bandaged head alongside, as soon as he
is let alone, puts his hands to his head without saying a word and
tries once more to remove the encircling lint.
There is an uproar, too, among some shadows that are visible against
a luminous background; they seem to be wildly agitated in the gloom
of the crypt. The light of a candle shows us several men shaken with
their efforts to hold a wounded soldier down on his stretcher. It is
a man whose feet are gone. At the end of his legs are terrible
bandages, with tourniquets to restrain the hemorrhage. His stumps
have bled into the linen wrappings, and he seems to wear red
breeches. His face is devilish, shining and sullen, and he is
raving. They are pressing down on his shoulders and knees, for this
man without feet would fain jump from the stretcher and go away.
"Let me go!" he rattles in breathless, quavering rage. His voice is
low, with sudden sonorities, like a trumpet that one tries to blow
too softly. "By God, let me go, I tell you! Do you think I'm going
to stop here? Allons, let me be, or I'll jump over you on my hands!"
So violently he contracts and extends himself that he pulls to and
fro those who are trying to restrain him by their gripping weight,
and I can see the zigzags of the candle held by a kneeling man whose
other arm engirdles the mutilated maniac, who shouts so fiercely
that he wakes up the sleepers and dispels the drowsiness of the
rest.
Pages:
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362