at the beautiful renaissance hospital at toulouse on the boulevard de strasbourg, i found georges cucurou lying in the corner of a huge hall—a splendid hall it was of carvings and arches and coffer-vaulted ceiling, all hung with flags.
how small his cot looked, there in the corner of that hall, amid paintings and gild94ings and magnificent cornices! how strange those nurses looked too—white-swathed matrons in flowing draperies, and nuns with flapping wide white headdresses gliding silently along the parqueted floor! how strange and quiet those weak, pale soldiers in the cots, and the patient soldiers sitting about in blue uniforms, and white, and red! but, most of all, how strange he seemed!
no, it was not coco, any more—not coco of the free, airy gestures, coco of the big, innocent eyes; but some one who was content to let his straight-forward words speak for themselves. not the boy with mobile, parted lips; but some one whose mouth closed firmly, now, when he paused, reflecting seriously before he answered. and, as he spoke of things beyond my ken, he made me, somehow, feel ashamed. why, it seemed, now, that, having known death so near, he knew life itself—he was the wiser, the elder;95 and i the boy, without experience save of the little arts and playthings of the world....
well, it was time to go. i took out my notebook to jot down an address, and as i did so i saw his eyes fastened upon my pencil. his face had changed.
without a word, he reached out his hand for it. i understood—and there came up to me suddenly, a picture of the laughing boy who had pretended to shoot with such a pencil—and ... even to give a bayonet thrust!
he looked at it curiously with a faint smile. “a-mer-i-cain pencil compagnie” he read with his queer french accent. then he pressed in the end, and a little point of lead popped out. he laughed—he sighed. he handed it back. there were tears in his eyes.
“ah, m’sieur,” he said, “do you remember that day in paris, last july?” there 96 was a silence. then—“why, it seems like ten years since then!”
so, in those two months, war the creator had done its work. coco was a man.
