They exhume the paralyzed man from his sheets and change his clothes opposite me.

At first he lies motionless in his clean shirt, in a lump.

Then he makes a guttural noise which brings the nurse up.

In a cracked voice, as of a machine that speaks, he asks her to move his feet, which are caught in the sheet.

Then he lies staring, arranged in rigid orderliness within the boards of his carcass.
Marie has come back and is sitting on a chair.