jured member: "Good! I will have them bring him to me at once, just as
soon as I am through with the operation that is now in hand."

And he went back to the shed, followed by Delaherche, who would not lose
sight of him for fear lest he might forget his promise.

The business that lay before him now was the rescision of a
shoulder-joint in accordance with Lisfranc's method, which surgeons
never fail to speak of as a "very pretty" operation, something neat
and expeditious, barely occupying forty seconds in the performance. The
patient was subjected to the influence of chloroform, while an assistant
grasped the shoulder with both hands, the fingers under the armpit, the
thumbs on top. Bouroche, brandishing the long, keen knife, cried: "Raise
him!" seized the deltoid with his left hand and with a swift movement of
the right cut through the flesh of the arm and severed the muscle;
then, with a deft rearward cut, he disarticulated the joint at a single
stroke, and presto! the arm fell on the table, taken off in three
motions. The assistant slipped his thumbs over the brachial artery in
such manner as to close it. "Let him down!" Bouroche could not restrain
a little pleased laugh as he proceeded to secure the artery, for he had
done it in thirty-five seconds. All that was left to do now was to
bring a flap of skin down over the wound and stitch it, in appearance
something like a flat epaulette. It was not only "pretty," but exciting,
on account of the danger, for a man will pump all the blood out of his
body in two minutes through the brachial, to say nothing of the risk
there is in bringing a patient to a sitting posture when under the
influence of anaesthetics.

Delaherche was white as a ghost; a thrill of horror ran down his back.
He would have turned and fled, but time was not given him; the arm was
already off. The soldier was a new recruit, a sturdy peasant lad; on
emerging from his state of coma he beheld a hospital attendant carrying
away the amputated limb to conceal it behind the lilacs. Giving a quick
downward glance at his shoulder, he saw the bleeding stump and knew what
had been done, whereon he became furiously angry.

"Ah, _nom de Dieu!_ what have you been doing to me? It is a shame!"

Bouroche was too done up to make him an immediate answer, but presently,
in his fatherly way:

"I acted for the best; I didn't want to see you kick the bucket, my boy.
Besides, I asked you, and you told me to go ahead."