to wait. I throw my knapsack down into a
corner of the station, and though my stomach is on fire, we are off,
Francis and I, wandering at random, in ecstasies before the church of
Saint-Ouen, in wonder before the old houses. We admire so much and
so long that the hour had long since passed before we even thought of
looking for the station again. "It's a long time since your comrades
departed," one of the employees of the railroad said to us; "they are in
Evreux." "The devil! The next train doesn't go until nine o'clock--Come,
let's get some dinner!"

When we arrived at Evreux, midnight had come. We could not present
ourselves at a hospital at such an hour; we would have the appearance
of malefactors. The night is superb, we cross the city and we find
ourselves in the open fields. It was the time of haying, the piles were
in stacks. We spy out a little stack in a field, we hollow out there two
comfortable nests, and I do not know whether it is the reminiscent odor
of our couch or the penetrating perfume of the woods that stirs us, but
we feel the need of airing our defunct love affairs. The subject was
inexhaustible. Little by little, however, words become fewer, enthusiasm
dies out, we fall asleep.

"Sacre bleu!" cries my neighbor, as he stretches himself. "What time
can it be?" I awake in turn. The sun will not be late in rising, for the
great blue curtain is laced at the horizon with a fringe of rose.
What misery! It will be necessary now to go knock at the door of the
hospital, to sleep in wards impregnated with that heavy smell through
which returns, like an obstinate refrain, the acrid flower of powder of
iodoform! All sadly we take our way to the hospital again. They open to
us but alas! one only of us is admitted, Francis;--and I, they send me
on to the lyceum. This life is no longer possible, I meditate an escape,
the house surgeon on duty comes down into the courtyard. I show him my
law-school diploma; he knows Paris, the Latin Quarter. I explain to him
my situation. "It has come to an absolute necessity." I tell him "that
either Francis comes to the lyceum or that I go to rejoin him at the
hospital." He thinks it over, and in the evening, coming close to my
bed, he slips these words into my ear! "Tell them tomorrow morning
that your sufferings increase." The next day, in fact, at about seven
o'clock, the doctor makes his appearance; a good, an excellent man,
who had but two faults; that of odorous teeth and