e doctor must get him well. Then the doctor drew away his
slim fingers from the rough, imploring grasp, and told him to be good
and patient.

"Be good! Be patient!" said the doctor, and that was all he could say,
for he was honest. What else could he say, knowing that there were
eighteen little holes, cut by the bullet, leaking poison into that
gashed, distended abdomen? When these little holes, that the doctor
could not stop, had leaked enough poison into his system, he would die.
Not today, no, but day after tomorrow. Three days more.

So all that first day, the man talked of getting well. He was insistent
on that. He was confident. Next day, the second of the three days the
doctor gave him, very much pain laid hold of him. His black brows bent
with pain and he grew puzzled. How could one live with such pain as
that?

That afternoon, about five o'clock, came the General. The one who
decorates the men. He had no sword, just a riding whip, so he tossed the
whip on the bed, for you can't do an accolade with anything but a sword.
Just the _Medaille Militaire_. Not the other one. But the _Medaille
Militaire_ carries a pension of a hundred francs a year, so that's
something. So the General said, very briefly: "In the name of the
Republic of France, I confer upon you the _Medaille Militaire_." Then he
bent over and kissed the man on his forehead, pinned the medal to the
bedspread, and departed.

There you are! Just a brief little ceremony, and perfunctory. We all got
that impression. The General has decorated so many dying men. And this
one seemed so nearly dead. He seemed half-conscious. Yet the General
might have put a little more feeling into it, not made it quite so
perfunctory. Yet he's done this thing so many, many times before. It's
all right, he does it differently when there are people about, but this
time there was no one present--just the doctor, the dying man, and me.
And so we four knew what it meant--just a widow's pension. Therefore
there wasn't any reason for the accolade, for the sonorous, ringing
phrases of a dress parade----

We all knew what it meant. So did the man. When he got the medal, he
knew too. He knew there wasn't any hope. I held the medal before him,
after the General had gone, in its red plush case. It looked cheap,
somehow. The exchange didn't seem even. He pushed it aside with a
contemptuous hand sweep, a disgusted shrug.

"I've seen these things before!" he exclaimed. We all had seen