With An Ambulance During The Franco-German War Part 18

One bright evening, as I was out walking on the bank of the Loire, I had felt a dead dull pain at the back of my head and in my back. On my return the pain became so intense that I was obliged to go straight to bed. All night and next day I felt very unwell, and Dr. Bouglet was sent for. He p.r.o.nounced me to be in fever, of what kind he could not exactly tell; but as small-pox was prevalent in Orleans, he feared it might be that. Subsequently he came to the conclusion that it was low fever of a typhoid sort.

On the 6th, I felt very ill indeed, and beyond a dim recollection of saying good-bye to my _confreres_, and the consciousness that my old friends Warren and Hayden were continually at my bedside, I can recall but little of what pa.s.sed around me for the next fortnight.

In a few days all the members of the Anglo-American Ambulance, who had been my friends and companions throughout this adventurous campaign, were off to Paris. So there was I in No. 12 Rue Royale, away from home, and prostrated by a dangerous illness. To those who read this, it may appear that I was alone and friendless. But it was not so. For no father's care could have been more tender, no mother's solicitude more lavish, than that bestowed upon me by M. and Madame Proust, on the one hand, and, on the other, by my guardian angel and nurse, Soeur Berthe, from Notre Dame des Recouvrances.

During five long weeks, this indefatigable woman never left my bedside day or night, save for an interval of an hour or so. She had been working under me in the Hospitals, attending the wounded for many months; and to her valuable and skilful aid I owe any success which may have attended my efforts on behalf of the patients in those wards. Now this good sister saw me, a stranger, but a fellow-labourer in the same cause, struck down at the end of the campaign; and she bestowed upon me, as she was wont to bestow upon them, with that grace of manner and beaming kindness which characterised all she undertook, the same devoted attentions. It was a privilege to be ill in her hands. I learned much from her; and I should be ungrateful indeed, were I to forget the lessons which her refinement, self-sacrifice, and unwearied good temper printed on my mind and heart during those weeks.

Dr. Bouglet came and went, sometimes making a second visit the same day.

Evidently he thought my case a serious one. At the end of about ten days from the beginning of my illness, I became so stupid and lethargic that I remembered nothing for the next fortnight, save that during one of my lucid intervals I saw Hayden, Parker, and Warren at my bedside, the first two having come from Paris for the express purpose of seeing me.

Warren stayed until I was getting better, and wrote home for me. He finished his letter, but almost failed in getting the address from me, so weak was my mind at the time. Hayden, on being questioned by one of the townspeople as to the chances of my recovery, answered, that it was all up with me. Soeur Berthe, likewise, wrote to Scarteen in my name; but I could do nothing of the kind myself.

About the fourth week I had completely regained consciousness, and was daily getting stronger; but that was not saying much, for I could neither turn in bed, nor lift an arm. I was simply skin and bone, and used to wonder how my knuckles did not come through the skin. When I looked at my limbs, I began to cry like a child, and this loss of control over my feelings was particularly distressing to me. They never let me see myself in the mirror until I was far advanced on the road to recovery; and then I beheld what looked more like a corpse than my living self, and was much taken aback. When allowed to speak, many hours were spent in pleasant conversation with Madame and M. Proust, and with Soeur Berthe, who was always an interesting and lively companion. She used to pray with me, read to me, both serious and amusing books, and instruct me in the secrets of the science of which she was mistress. She would bring me flowers and fruit according to my fancy. And so the weeks pa.s.sed by, and, with the a.s.sistance of such good friends, they were pleasant enough.

Before my brain got quite clear, I used to imagine that I saw numbers of my friends at home, and was talking with them. Nor were the persons phantoms. For I spoke to those who happened to be paying me a visit to see how I was going on. Upon discovering my mistake, I felt it bitterly, but was soon put into good humour again by Soeur Berthe. I have not yet said much of my hostess Madame Proust; not because she was wanting in any way,--far from it, indeed. That kind lady put her house and all therein at my disposal, and was a most agreeable and sympathetic friend.

Occasionally, after returning from her walk in the town, she would tell me of the people who were inquiring for me, which was an equal pleasure and help to a convalescent.

Just about this stage of my illness the Germans evacuated Orleans. I can remember well hearing the last of their bands playing in one direction; while the French were advancing in the other. This was succeeded after a while by frantic cheering, by the din of music, and the tramp of soldiery,--a tramp which I knew to be very different from the measured tread that I had heard an hour previously. And so had come and gone the second German occupation of Orleans,--an epoch in the life of those who took any share in it which is indelibly stamped on their memories.

As time wore on I was removed to the arm-chair by the open window, where I used to remain for several hours every day, when the weather permitted, propped up with pillows and covered against the cold. Many of the pa.s.sers-by seemed to think me worth looking at, for quite a number stopped in very French fashion to stare up at me. This was only curiosity, and by no means rudeness. At last I was able to go out, or rather to hobble out; and for the first few days had enough to do to keep on my legs while shaking hands with the many kind and friendly townspeople who came forward to greet me. I would go into one shop and rest there for a few minutes, and then move a few doors further on. Thus I spent some hours every day. Many of our old Ambulance friends and acquaintances came also to pay me a visit. There was no end, I may truly say, to the kindness I met with on all sides.

One day I went to the Church of St. Aignan, which is at the end of the Quai du Chatelet, to hear a grand High Ma.s.s, offered up for the regeneration of France, which was attended by the _elite_ of Orleans. I settled myself in a chair at the end of the church, and presently the ceremonies began by a procession. As it pa.s.sed me a priest stepped out of the ranks, and, taking me by the arm, led me up the church, and, to my great confusion, showed me into one of the stalls in the Sanctuary. I never saw the priest before or since.

When I look back on those days of trial and sickness, and how I lay on that bed unable to stir hand or foot, I remember what a longing came over me for the sight of one familiar face, though but for a few minutes. One was still in one's youth; and I fancied, whilst my head was buried in the pillow, that if I could but speak just a few words to my mother, or to some one at home, it would be enough to cure me. Until then, I never knew how much I loved my native land, or realised my heart's deep devotion to that little spot called home, and to all those dear friends about it.

Little by little I came round. I used to drive out with M. Proust to his lovely little country house near Olivet, and visited the camellia houses and orange groves, all of which were under gla.s.s, at the great chateau there. But during my convalescence, the event of the day was the morning post, which brought my letters and newspapers, every line of which I read and re-read with the greatest avidity, until I knew them by heart. One letter in particular, from a great friend of mine, was so amusing, and had such a reviving effect on me, that I read it certainly a score of times, and I laughed as much the last time as the first.

I was strictly prohibited by the doctor from writing; but in spite of his orders I coaxed Soeur Berthe to let me have pen and ink. Her consternation was great when she saw me fainting from the exertion. One letter I wrote to my mother while my hand was held on the paper, placed on a desk before me; so that I had only, as it were, to form the characters. I used to write a sentence or two every day, and so put them together bit by bit. I compiled several commonplace and uninteresting productions, and sent them home in great glee at the success of my performance. I could not guess how startled they would be at receiving these curious epistles, some of which afterwards came back into my hands. They resolved to send my brother Arthur to fetch me home; and he travelled immediately to Orleans, where he received a hearty welcome from M. and Madame Proust and my other friends.

I insert as an Appendix, from the journal which my brother kept, the impressions made on us both by a visit we paid to the field of Coulmiers.

It was my last view of the scenes in which I had taken part.

My brother arrived on 8th April, and on the 21st we bade farewell to our home in the Rue Royale, and the friends who had made it such, and set out on our journey to Ireland.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

AN APPENDIX.--M. AND MADAME COLOMBIER.--VISIT TO THE BATTLEFIELD OF COULMIERS.--THE SOLE FRENCH VICTORY.--CONCLUSION.

(_From Arthur Ryan's Diary, Wednesday, 19th April._)

Our dejener had not long been over when a carriage drove up, and Charlie bade me prepare for a drive with some friends into the country.

We wished M. and Madame Proust good-bye for the day, and stepped into the carriage, where our new host and hostess were awaiting us. M. and Madame Colombier welcomed me cordially as the brother of their friend, and I was not long in their company before I knew how truly they had been such to him. M. Colombier had been a Papal Zouave, but, on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, had joined the ranks of his countrymen. A middle-aged man with a frank warm manner, and evidently very proud of his wife,--as well he might be. I have seen but little of men or women; but I fancy that many years of experience may fail to remove Madame Colombier from the place she gained that day in my estimation. She was a heroine, and, what is still rarer, a humble heroine. Being a Canadian she spoke English very fairly; and as we drove along she told us many stories of her war experiences, and with so much gaiety that I felt it hard to believe those experiences had been so often bitter ones to her and her husband. Privations, loss of property, personal danger, all were related as if she were inventing and not recording; all were jested about whenever they affected only herself.

But when she spoke of the sufferings of others, of her husband's danger, of the poor soldiers whom she had lodged and tended to the last, then her woman's heart revealed itself, and showed that though gay it was tender, though buoyant it was thoroughly unselfish; and, through all, she seemed so perfectly unconscious of any merit on her part, that one would have thought that her services had been remunerative or a part of her ordinary duty, instead of absorbing as they did the great part of what the war had left them.

A shower came on, and to my surprise Madame Colombier unpinned her warm shawl, and insisted in wrapping Charlie up in it, lest in his weak state he should take cold. "This is my campaigning dress," said she, as I expressed my fears as to the insufficiency of her black silk dress in the teeth of the driving rain; but little she seemed to care, her only anxiety being to shield the "poor invalid" from the storm.

After what seemed a short drive, we were so pleasant together, we came to the battlefield of Coulmiers. On each side of the road the ground was littered with the debris of camp fires, and with the straw that had served to keep some of the soldiers off the frosty ground, as they slept after their fight. Deep ruts--ploughed by the wheels of the guns, cut up the roads and fields; but beyond these marks, and the general bare, down-trodden look of the ground, nothing remained to speak of the terrible battle that had so lately covered these fields with the dead and dying. But as we drove into the Chateau Renardier, M. Colombier's country place, the sad remembrances of war were multiplied ten-fold. The great trees on each side of the drive were riven in all directions, by the shot and sh.e.l.ls; and I remarked several thick firs cut clean in two by what was evidently a single shot.

But here we are at the Chateau. It was a large house, in the regular French style, prettily situated in the midst of a well-planted lawn. It was not, however, at the architecture of the house, nor at the beauties of the lawn, that I looked, as I drove up. No: what riveted my gaze was the number of round holes that perforated the front in every direction.

The sh.e.l.ls had done their work well; shattered windows and pierced walls were sorry sights for M. Colombier to show his guests; and little more could be seen of the Chateau Renardier on the front side. As we entered, and pa.s.sed from room to room, we began to realise the full extent of the damage. Deep stains of blood were on the dark oak floors, which in many places had been splintered by the bursting sh.e.l.ls. Madame Colombier took us to her boudoir. Panelled in gold and white, it must have been a lovely room--but now it was a wreck. Right through the mirrors had the splintered sh.e.l.ls crashed; in one corner of the rich ceiling the sky was visible through a large shot hole,--"and here," said our hostess, "here they used to skin their sheep"; and she pointed to the chandelier, which had sadly suffered from its unwonted use, and beneath which the floor was stained, this time not with human gore.

"This is my room," said M. Colombier, as he showed us into the billiard room. The slate table was cracked in two, and on the tattered green cloth lay the remains of the oats which had fed the horses; for that room had served as a stable.

We pa.s.sed into the garden. It had been the scene of a French bayonet charge; and little shape remained, or sign of garden beauty, save that in one trampled bed, we found some plants of the lily of the valley sprouting to the early spring sunshine. Deep in the gravel walks, and through the once well-trimmed turf, had the wheels of the guns sunk, as the Prussians made their hasty retreat before the victorious French; and it must have been some consolation to the fair owner of this desolated garden, to think that it was the scene of the solitary French victory in that disastrous war.

In the front garden every vine was dead, cut from the wall. For the wall had served as a shelter for the German soldiers, and was pierced all along for rifle rests, and by every hole was a heap of empty cartridge cases. The greenhouse and conservatories,--who shall tell their ruin?

Gla.s.s is a poor protection against artillery, and the fierce frost had completed the work. There were the plants all arranged on their stands; there stood the orange trees--all were dead and brown--not a twig was alive. I thought of my mother and her flowers, as Madame Colombier turned with a sigh from her ruined conservatory, and walked back through the melancholy garden. But she was gay enough, though her husband seemed to feel deeply the destruction of his lovely home. He had been married but five years, and had spent much money in making this a happy spot for his wife and children--and now, the wreck! But even M. Colombier laughed with us when we came to the piles of empty bottles that lay in the yard; they were all that was left of two well-filled cellars. The French soldiers had celebrated their victory at the expense of the master of the Chateau Renardier.

In the coach-house were Madame Colombier's two broughams; they had been used in the battle as temporary fortifications, and were literally riddled with bullets. We walked to the fish pond--a piece of ornamental water in the lawn. It had been netted, and not a fish was left. I stumbled on something under the trees by its brink. It was a Prussian cavalry saddle, not a comfortable-looking thing, thought I, as I surveyed the angular hide-covered wood,--but certainly economical when it is so easily lost. But evening was coming on; so having had lunch in the Chateau (the strangest ruin I ever picnicked in), we bade adieu to Renardier, and drove back to Orleans.

M. Colombier's house there had, like his country chateau, been used during the war as a little hospital; and Charlie told me, as he waited in the drawing-room before dinner, how many wounded and dying inmates that room lately had.

Dinner was served in an ante-room, for which Madame Colombier made her apologies, as her dining-room was occupied--by whom we presently saw.

Having dined heartily, and been highly amused by the penalties with which the children threatened the Prussians,--such as feeding them on poisonous mushrooms, wood, and such like, I was surprised by Madame Colombier taking out a cigar case, handing it round, and helping herself. "Necessity has made me a smoker," she laughingly observed, as she saw my ill-concealed wonder; and if any lady would condemn my hostess for her cigar, let her follow Madame Colombier as she slips quietly out; and see for herself how false is that delicacy which would place a difficulty in the way of true and heroic Christian charity. We were not long before we followed our hostess. We found her in her dining-room, which had been fitted up as a temporary hospital. There she was tending the wound of her last patient, with a skill which was the result of long and hard-earned experience. And here we will leave Madame Colombier, with the firm trust that her unselfish charity and unostentatious heroism will not go unrewarded before Him, who has promised to repay a cup of cold water given for His sake.

EPILOGUE.

A quarter of a century has elapsed since the occurrence of the events which I have described. When I view the scenes of those eventful days through this long vista, and when sometimes for a moment one particular picture of hospital or camp life presents itself before my mind, I start as if awakened from a troubled dream, to find there still the shape and form of fact.

The years have come and gone, and with them have pa.s.sed away many of the princ.i.p.al actors in that great drama.

Wilhelm, Napoleon, Moltke, the Crown Prince, the Red Prince, Gambetta, d'Aureille de Paladine, Bazaine, MacMahon, have disappeared from the stage.

Modern surgery and medicine have lost some of their ablest pioneers in Langenbeck, Nussbaum, Esmark and Marion Sims; and I personally have to mourn for many who were kindly and helpful to me in those days, amongst them M. and Madame Proust and General Charles Brackenbury.

I have often wished to revisit Sedan and Orleans; but the desire to make the most of a somewhat limited holiday-time, and to gain fresh experiences, has always led me to new districts and countries previously unknown to me, and I have never had my wish fulfilled. I am glad to say, however, that I never quite lost sight of my old friends M. and Madame Proust, and a visit from their nephew revived all the old a.s.sociations and remembrances afresh.

It may interest my readers to hear something of our ambulance surgeons.

Sir William MacCormac, who succeeded Marion Sims at Sedan, is now one of the greatest living authorities on military surgery and gunshot wounds.

His colleague Dr. Mackellar is distinguished on the staff of St.

Thomas's Hospital, and Dr. Parker is an eminent London specialist. The others, scattered over the face of the globe, I have lost sight of, but would fain hope one day to meet some of them again.

One object I have had in view in publishing these notes may be worthy of mention.

As I have tried to write down exactly what I witnessed, they may help to afford some idea of what war really means,--war as a hard practical fact--stripped of all the glamour, and poetry, and pride of conquest, that are so attractive when seen in history.

Even from my own observations I could gather that all is not victory to the victors themselves.

When the German soldiery learnt that Louis Napoleon was present in the trap at Sedan, there broke out among them the wildest exhibition of delight; for they believed--wrongly as it came to pa.s.s--that his capture would end the war and enable them to go back to their homes. And when peace was finally proclaimed, the Germans in Orleans were no less demonstrative and enthusiastic than the French, whose cup of suffering had been filled to overflowing.