I had not seen much of De Valpic during the last few days. Our platoons had relieved each other, and his presence always weighed on me a little like a vague remorse. That afternoon I found him lying, with closed eyes, in the shed I had gone into, meaning to take a nap. He raised his eyelids:
"Halloa!"
I had to go up to him, and asked him:
"Not so bad the other night, was it?"
"For me it was."
I joked.
"For you particularly?"
"Yes, I've got a cold already."
He coughed.
"Pooh!" I said rather abruptly. "As long as you've nothing worse than that the matter with you."
I suddenly thought of him as a soft flabby creature, this tall fellow brought up by women. I think he guessed my thoughts.
"If only I had not got such a high temperature!" he said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
[Pg 273]
"High temperature! Who said you'd got a high temperature?"
I stretched myself on the straw, without much desire to continue conversation. He seemed to be searching in his pocket. I saw a sort of metallic tube between his fingers, which he unscrewed; then holding the thing out to me, said:
"Here you are, just look at this will you?"
He explained:
"It's a mouth thermometer. I always carry it on me."
"What an idea!"
I did not know that the instrument existed in this form. The graduated glass tube only measured a few centimetres. I mechanically turned it round and round until I saw the little column of mercury shining.
"102.2°!" I exclaimed. "Is that your temperature?"
"Yes."
"You ought to take some ... quinine."
He shook his head.
"You see ... it's the same nearly every day."
I did not understand.
"What?"
"I'm ill," he murmured. "It's rotten, oh heavens, how rotten it is!"
I looked at him interrogatively. Turned towards me he unburdened himself of his secret, in a broken voice. It was months, years now since he had been well. Last spring his mother—"Maman" he said (the word moved me and made me dream of mine)—his mother had implored him to consult a doctor.... He had resisted a long time afraid to hear that he was ill.... How alarming it had been when the[Pg 274] doctor, after sounding him, had knitted his eyebrows and told him he must be careful. It was not so very long since his father, a few months after a warning of this kind, had been taken from them.
While he talked I seized the opportunity of watching him unobserved. Now that my eyes were opened I immediately became aware of the well-known signs: this narrow, hollow chest, the sallow complexion, the pink patches on the cheek-bones, down to the tapering fingers.
"I realised that I could not take any risks and I wanted to live.... I wanted to. Two days later Mother and I took the train to Switzerland. Do you know Chateau d'Oex?"
I made a sign of assent.
"I stayed there for four months, April to July, resting on a long chair in the sun."
"Did you get better?"
"Much better, yes. No perspiring at night. I put on weight, and at the same time my temperature, oh! the thermometer, you know, is the surest sign of all! I had seen my father, getting so terribly feverish every afternoon! As for me, when I saw that it already rose quite easily to 101.1°, 101.3° I had not the slightest doubt about it. Well, I repeat, everything was improving. They told me that if I continued to take great care all the winter...."
He paused for a few seconds:
"But on the 2nd of August, you see ... I had to leave."
"What did your mother say to it?"
He avoided that subject, but from a chance word he let slip I guessed the anguish and the resistance of his people—the sustained struggle.
[Pg 275]
"You ought to have got discharged!"
"How could I at su............