on him with a kind
of stupefaction.

Another, who had a shattered arm, gave us a good deal of trouble by his
amazing uncleanliness. Before giving him the anaesthetic, the orderly
took from his mouth a set of false teeth, which he confessed he had not
removed for several months, and which exhaled an unimaginable stench.

I remember, too, a little fair-haired chap of rather chilly demeanour,
who suddenly said "Good-bye" to me with lips that quivered like those of
a child about to cry.

The interpreter from Headquarters, my friend C----, came to see them all
as soon as they had got over their stupor, and interrogated them with
placid patience, comparing all their statements in order to glean some
trustworthy indication.

Thus days and nights passed by in ceaseless toil, under a perpetual
menace, in the midst of an ever-growing fatigue which gave things the
substance and aspects they take on in a nightmare.

The very monotony of this existence was made up of a thousand dramatic
details, each of which would have been an event in normal life. I still
see, as through the mists of a dream, the orderly of a dying captain
sobbing at his bedside and covering his hands with kisses. I still
hear the little lad whose life blood had ebbed away, saying to me in
imploring tones: "Save me, Doctor! Save me for my mother!"... and I
think a man must have heard such words in such a place to understand
them aright, I think that every day this man must gain a stricter, a
more precise, a more pathetic idea of suffering and of death.

One Sunday evening, the bombardment was renewed with extraordinary
violence. We had just sent off General S----, who was smoking on his
stretcher, and chatting calmly and cheerfully; I was operating on an
infantryman who had deep wounds in his arms and thighs. Suddenly there
was a great commotion. A hurricane of shells fell upon the hospital.
I heard a crash which shook the ground and the walls violently, then
hurried footsteps and cries in the passage.

I looked at the man sleeping and breathing heavily, and I almost envied
his forgetfulness of all things, the dissolution of his being in a
darkness so akin to liberating death. My task completed, I went out to
view the damage.

A shell had fallen on an angle of the building, blowing in the windows
of three wards, scattering stones in all directions, and riddling walls
and ceilings with large fragments of metal. The wounded were moaning,
shrouded in acrid