sked the _Medecin Major_ for permission to smoke. The _Medecin
Major_ had refused, saying that it would disturb the other patients. Yet
after the doctor had gone, Alexandre had produced a cigarette and
lighted it, defying them all from behind his _Medaille Militaire_. The
patient in the next bed had become violently nauseated in consequence,
yet Alexandre had smoked on, secure in his _Medaille Militaire_. How
much honour lay in that?

Here lay Felix, asleep. Poor, querulous, feeble-minded Felix, with a
foul fistula, which filled the whole ward with its odour. In one
sleeping hand lay his little round mirror, in the other, he clutched his
comb. With daylight, he would trim and comb his moustache, his poor,
little drooping moustache, and twirl the ends of it.

Beyond lay Alphonse, drugged with morphia, after an intolerable day.
That morning he had received a package from home, a dozen pears. He had
eaten them all, one after the other, though his companions in the beds
adjacent looked on with hungry, longing eyes. He offered not one, to
either side of him. After his gorge, he had become violently ill, and
demanded the basin in which to unload his surcharged stomach.

Here lay Hippolyte, who for eight months had jerked on the bar of a
captive balloon, until appendicitis had sent him into hospital. He was
not ill, and his dirty jokes filled the ward, provoking laughter, even
from dying Marius. How filthy had been his jokes--how they had been
matched and beaten by the jokes of others. How filthy they all were,
when they talked with each other, shouting down the length of the ward.

Wherein lay the difference? Was it not all a dead-end occupation,
nursing back to health men to be patched up and returned to the
trenches, or a man to be patched up, court-martialled and shot? The
difference lay in the Ideal.

One had no ideals. The others had ideals, and fought for them. Yet had
they? Poor selfish Alexandre, poor vain Felix, poor gluttonous Alphonse,
poor filthy Hippolyte--was it possible that each cherished ideals,
hidden beneath? Courageous dreams of freedom and patriotism? Yet if so,
how could such beliefs fail to influence their daily lives? Could one
cherish standards so noble, yet be himself so ignoble, so petty, so
commonplace?

At this point her candle burned out, so the night nurse took another
one, and passed from bed to bed. It was very incomprehensible. Poor,
whining Felix, poor whining Alphonse, poor whining Hi