She led the way to a side path from which she could see the blind man
confided to her care. They stood motionless, face to face. Desnoyers
wished to say many things; many . . . but he hesitated, not knowing how
to frame his complaints, his pleadings, his endearments. Far above all
these thoughts towered one, fatal, dominant and wrathful.
"Who is that man?"
The spiteful accent, the harsh voice with which he said these words
surprised him as though they came from someone else's mouth.
The nurse looked at him with her great limpid eyes, eyes that seemed
forever freed from contractions of surprise or fear. Her response
slipped from her with equal directness.
"It is Laurier. . . . It is my husband."
Laurier! . . . Julio looked doubtfully and for a long time at the
soldier before he could be convinced. That blind officer motionless
on the bench, that figure of heroic grief, was Laurier! . . . At first
glance, he appeared prematurely old with roughened and bronzed skin
so furrowed with lines that they converged like rays around all the
openings of his face. His hair was beginning to whiten on the temples
and in the beard which covered his cheeks. He had lived twenty years
in that one month. . . . At the same time he appeared younger, with a
youthfulness that was radiating an inward vigor, with the strength of a
soul which has suffered the most violent emotions and, firm and serene
in the satisfaction of duty fulfilled, can no longer know fear.
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