"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 grass 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 practitioner 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