er conditions such as the following, such and
such remedies and treatment proved futile and valueless. Grammont had a
hole in his abdomen, when he entered, about an inch long. After about a
month, this hole was scientifically increased to a foot in length,
rubber drains stuck out in all directions, and went inwards as well,
pretty deep, and his pain was enhanced a hundredfold, while his chances
of recovery were not bright. But Grammont had a good constitution, and
the surgeon worked hard over him, for if he got well, it would be a
wonderful case, and the surgeon's reputation would benefit. Grammont
bore it all very patiently, and did not ask to be allowed to die, as
many of them did, for since he was of the _Bataillon d'Afrique_, such a
request would be equivalent to asking for a remission of sentence--a
sentence which the courts averred he justly deserved and merited. They
took no account of the fact that his ethics were those of a wandering
juggler, turning somersaults on a carpet at the public _fetes_ of Paris,
and had been polished off by contact with the men and women he had
encountered in his capacity of _garcon d'hotel_, in a fifth-rate hotel
near Montmartre. On the contrary, they rather expected of him the
decencies and moralities that come from careful nurture, and these not
being forthcoming, they had sent him to the _Bataillon d'Afrique_, where
his eccentricities would be of no danger to the public.

So Grammont continued to suffer, over a period of several long months,
and he was sufficiently cynical, owing to his short experience of life,
to realize that the surgeon, who worked over him so constantly and
solicitously, was not solely and entirely disinterested in his efforts
to make him well. Grammont had no life to return to, that was the
trouble. Everyone knew it. The surgeon knew it, and the orderlies knew
it, and his comrades in the adjoining beds knew it--he had absolutely no
future before him, and there was not much sense in trying to make him
well enough to return to Paris, a hopeless cripple. He lay in hospital
for several months, suffering greatly, but greatly patient. During that
time, he received no letters, for there was no one to write to him. He
was an _apache_, he belonged to a criminal regiment, and he had no
family anyhow, and his few friends, tattooed all over the body like
himself, were also members of the same regiment, and as such, unable to
do much for him in civil life after the war. Su