ient 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 assistant 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 assistant, 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 wishing
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