The Downfall Part 36

Besides, I asked you, and you told me to go ahead."

"I told you to go ahead! I did? How could I know what I was saying!" His anger subsided and he began to weep scalding tears. "What is going to become of me now?"

They carried him away and laid him on the straw, and gave the table and its covering a thorough cleansing; and the buckets of blood-red water that they threw out across the gra.s.s plot gave to the pale daisies a still deeper hue of crimson.

When Delaherche had in some degree recovered his equanimity he was astonished to notice that the bombardment was still going on. Why had it not been silenced? Rose's tablecloth must have been hoisted over the citadel by that time, and yet it seemed as if the fire of the Prussian batteries was more rapid and furious than ever. The uproar was such that one could not hear his own voice; the sustained vibration tried the stoutest nerves. On both operators and patients the effect could not but be most unfavorable of those incessant detonations that seemed to penetrate the inmost recesses of one's being. The entire hospital was in a state of feverish alarm and apprehension.

"I supposed it was all over; what can they mean by keeping it up?"

exclaimed Delaherche, who was nervously listening, expecting each shot would be the last.

Returning to Bouroche to remind him of his promise and conduct him to the captain, he was astonished to find him seated on a bundle of straw before two pails of iced water, into which he had plunged both his arms, bared to the shoulder. The major, weary and disheartened, overwhelmed by a sensation of deepest melancholy and dejection, had reached one of those terrible moments when the pract.i.tioner becomes conscious of his own impotency; he had exhausted his strength, physical and moral, and taken this means to restore it. And yet he was not a weakling; he was steady of hand and firm of heart; but the inexorable question had presented itself to him: "What is the use?" The feeling that he could accomplish so little, that so much must be left undone, had suddenly paralyzed him. What was the use? since Death, in spite of his utmost effort, would always be victorious. Two attendants came in, bearing Captain Beaudoin on a stretcher.

"Major," Delaherche ventured to say, "here is the captain."

Bouroche opened his eyes, withdrew his arms from their cold bath, shook and dried them on the straw. Then, rising to his feet:

"Ah, yes; the next one--Well, well, the day's work is not yet done."

And he shook the tawny locks upon his lion's head, rejuvenated and refreshed, restored to himself once more by the invincible habit of duty and the stern discipline of his profession.

"Good! just above the right ankle," said Bouroche, with unusual garrulity, intended to quiet the nerves of the patient. "You displayed wisdom in selecting the location of your wound; one is not much the worse for a hurt in that quarter. Now we'll just take a little look at it."

But Beaudoin's persistently lethargic condition evidently alarmed him. He inspected the contrivance that had been applied by the field attendant to check the flow of blood, which was simply a cord pa.s.sed around the leg outside the trousers and twisted tight with the a.s.sistance of a bayonet sheath, with a growling request to be informed what infernal ignoramus had done that. Then suddenly he saw how matters were and was silent; while they were bringing him in from the field in the overcrowded landau the improvised tourniquet had become loosened and slipped down, thus giving rise to an extensive hemorrhage. He relieved his feelings by storming at the hospital steward who was a.s.sisting him.

"You confounded snail, cut! Are you going to keep me here all day?"

The attendant cut away the trousers and drawers, then the shoe and sock, disclosing to view the leg and foot in their pale nudity, stained with blood. Just over the ankle was a frightful laceration, into which the splinter of the bursting sh.e.l.l had driven a piece of the red cloth of the trousers. The muscle protruded from the lips of the gaping orifice, a roll of whitish, mangled tissue.

Gilberte had to support herself against one of the uprights of the shed.

Ah! that flesh, that poor flesh that was so white; now all torn and maimed and bleeding! Despite the horror and terror of the sight she could not turn away her eyes.

"Confound it!" Bouroche exclaimed, "they have made a nice mess here!"

He felt the foot and found it cold; the pulse, if any, was so feeble as to be undistinguishable. His face was very grave, and he pursed his lips in a way that was habitual with him when he had a more than usually serious case to deal with.

"Confound it," he repeated, "I don't like the looks of that foot!"

The captain, whom his anxiety had finally aroused from his semi-somnolent state, asked:

"What were you saying, major?"

Bouroche's tactics, whenever an amputation became necessary, were never to appeal directly to the patient for the customary authorization. He preferred to have the patient accede to it voluntarily.

"I was saying that I don't like the looks of that foot," he murmured, as if thinking aloud. "I am afraid we shan't be able to save it."

In a tone of alarm Beaudoin rejoined: "Come, major, there is no use beating about the bush. What is your opinion?"

"My opinion is that you are a brave man, captain, and that you are going to let me do what the necessity of the case demands."

To Captain Beaudoin it seemed as if a sort of reddish vapor arose before his eyes through which he saw things obscurely. He understood. But notwithstanding the intolerable fear that appeared to be clutching at his throat, he replied, unaffectedly and bravely:

"Do as you think best, major."

The preparations did not consume much time. The a.s.sistant had saturated a cloth with chloroform and was holding it in readiness; it was at once applied to the patient's nostrils. Then, just at the moment that the brief struggle set in that precedes anaesthesia, two attendants raised the captain and placed him on the mattress upon his back, in such a position that the legs should be free; one of them retained his grasp on the left limb, holding it flexed, while an a.s.sistant, seizing the right, clasped it tightly with both his hands in the region of the groin in order to compress the arteries.

Gilberte, when she saw Bouroche approach the victim with the glittering steel, could endure no more.

"Oh, don't! oh, don't! it is too horrible!"

And she would have fallen had it not been that Mme. Delaherche put forth her arm to sustain her.

"But why do you stay here?"

Both the women remained, however. They averted their eyes, not wis.h.i.+ng to see the rest; motionless and trembling they stood locked in each other's arms, notwithstanding the little love there was between them.

At no time during the day had the artillery thundered more loudly than now. It was three o'clock, and Delaherche declared angrily that he gave it up--he could not understand it. There could be no doubt about it now, the Prussian batteries, instead of slackening their fire, were extending it. Why? What had happened? It was as if all the forces of the nether regions had been unchained; the earth shook, the heavens were on fire.

The ring of flame-belching mouths of bronze that encircled Sedan, the eight hundred guns of the German armies, that were served with such activity and raised such an uproar, were expending their thunders on the adjacent fields; had that concentric fire been focused upon the city, had the batteries on those commanding heights once begun to play upon Sedan, it would have been reduced to ashes and pulverized into dust in less than fifteen minutes. But now the projectiles were again commencing to fall upon the houses, the crash that told of ruin and destruction was heard more frequently. One exploded in the Rue des Voyards, another grazed the tall chimney of the factory, and the bricks and mortar came tumbling to the ground directly in front of the shed where the surgeons were at work. Bouroche looked up and grumbled:

"Are they trying to finish our wounded for us? Really, this racket is intolerable."

In the meantime an attendant had seized the captain's leg, and the major, with a swift circular motion of his hand, made an incision in the skin below the knee and some two inches below the spot where he intended to saw the bone; then, still employing the same thin-bladed knife, that he did not change in order to get on more rapidly, he loosened the skin on the superior side of the incision and turned it back, much as one would peel an orange. But just as he was on the point of dividing the muscles a hospital steward came up and whispered in his ear:

"Number two has just slipped his cable."

The major did not hear, owing to the fearful uproar.

"Speak up, can't you! My ear drums are broken with their d-----d cannon."

"Number two has just slipped his cable."

"Who is that, number two?"

"The arm, you know."

"Ah, very good! Well, then, you can bring me number three, the jaw."

And with wonderful dexterity, never changing his position, he cut through the muscles clean down to the bone with a single motion of his wrist. He laid bare the tibia and fibula, introduced between them an implement to keep them in position, drew the saw across them once, and they were sundered. And the foot remained in the hands of the attendant who was holding it.

The flow of blood had been small, thanks to the pressure maintained by the a.s.sistant higher up the leg, at the thigh. The ligature of the three arteries was quickly accomplished, but the major shook his head, and when the a.s.sistant had removed his fingers he examined the stump, murmuring, certain that the patient could not hear as yet:

"It looks bad; there's no blood coming from the arterioles."

And he completed his diagnosis of the case by an expressive gesture: Another poor fellow who was soon to answer the great roll-call! while on his perspiring face was again seen that expression of weariness and utter dejection, that hopeless, unanswerable: "What is the use?" since out of every ten cases that they a.s.sumed the terrible responsibility of operating on they did not succeed in saving four. He wiped his forehead, and set to work to draw down the flap of skin and put in the three sutures that were to hold it in place.

Delaherche having told Gilberte that the operation was completed, she turned her gaze once more upon the table; she caught a glimpse of the captain's foot, however, as the attendant was carrying it away to the place behind the lilacs. The charnel house there continued to receive fresh occupants; two more corpses had recently been brought in and added to the ghastly array, one with blackened lips still parted wide as if rending the air with shrieks of anguish, the other, his form so contorted and contracted in the convulsions of the last agony that he was like a stunted, malformed boy. Unfortunately, there was beginning to be a scarcity of room in the little secluded corner, and the human debris had commenced to overflow and invade the adjacent alley. The attendant hesitated a moment, in doubt what to do with the captain's foot, then finally concluded to throw it on the general pile.

"Well, captain, that's over with," the major said to Beaudoin when he regained consciousness. "You'll be all right now."

But the captain did not show the cheeriness that follows a successful operation. He opened his eyes and made an attempt to raise himself, then fell back on his pillow, murmuring wearily, in a faint voice: