The Downfall

“Major,” said Delaherche, plucking him by the sleeve, “there is an officer over here, Captain Beaudoin – ”

Bouroche interrupted him. “What, Beaudoin here! Ah, the poor devil!” And he crossed over at once to the side of the wounded man. A single glance, however, must have sufficed to show him that the case was a bad one, for he added in the same breath, without even stooping to examine the injured member: “Good! I will have them bring him to me at once, just as soon as I am through with the operation that is now in hand.”

And he went back to the shed, followed by Delaherche, who would not lose sight of him for fear lest he might forget his promise.

The business that lay before him now was the rescision of a shoulder-joint in accordance with Lisfranc’s method, which surgeons never fail to speak of as a “very pretty” operation, something neat and expeditious, barely occupying forty seconds in the performance. The patient was subjected to the influence of chloroform, while an assistant grasped the shoulder with both hands, the fingers under the armpit, the thumbs on top. Bouroche, brandishing the long, keen knife, cried: “Raise him!” seized the deltoid with his left hand and with a swift movement of the right cut through the flesh of the arm and severed the muscle; then, with a deft rearward cut, he disarticulated the joint at a single stroke, and presto! the arm fell on the table, taken off in three motions. The assistant slipped his thumbs over the brachial artery in such manner as to close it. “Let him down!” Bouroche could not restrain a little pleased laugh as he proceeded to secure the artery, for he had done it in thirty-five seconds. All that was left to do now was to bring a flap of skin down over the wound and stitch it, in appearance something like a flat epaulette. It was not only “pretty,” but exciting, on account of the danger, for a man will pump all the blood out of his body in two minutes through the brachial, to say nothing of the risk there is in bringing a patient to a sitting posture when under the influence of anaesthetics.

Delaherche was white as a ghost; a thrill of horror ran down his back. He would have turned and fled, but time was not given him; the arm was already off. The soldier was a new recruit, a sturdy peasant lad; on emerging from his state of coma he beheld a hospital attendant carrying away the amputated limb to conceal it behind the lilacs. Giving a quick downward glance at his shoulder, he saw the bleeding stump and knew what had been done, whereon he became furiously angry.

“Ah, nom de Dieu! what have you been doing to me? It is a shame!”

Bouroche was too done up to make him an immediate answer, but presently, in his fatherly way:

“I acted for the best; I didn’t want to see you kick the bucket, my boy. Besides, I asked you, and you told me to go ahead.”

“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 tawny locks upon his lion’s head, rejuvenated and refreshed, restored to himself once more by the invincible habit of duty and the stern discipline of his profession.

“Good! just above the right ankle,” said Bouroche, with unusual garrulity, intended to quiet the nerves of the patient. “You displayed wisdom in selecting the location of your wound; one is not much the worse for a hurt in that quarter. Now we’ll just take a little look at it.”

But Beaudoin’s persistently lethargic condition evidently alarmed him. He inspected the contrivance that had been applied by the field attendant to check the flow of blood, which was simply a cord passed around the leg outside the trousers and twisted tight with the assistance of a bayonet sheath, with a growling request to be informed what infernal ignoramus had done that. Then suddenly he saw how matters were and was silent; while they were bringing him in from the field in the overcrowded landau the improvised tourniquet had become loosened and slipped down, thus giving rise to an extensive hemorrhage. He relieved his feelings by storming at the hospital steward who was assisting him.

“You confounded snail, cut! Are you going to keep me here all day?”

The attendant cut away the trousers and drawers, then the shoe and sock, disclosing to view the leg and foot in their pale nudity, stained with blood. Just over the ankle was a frightful laceration, into which the splinter of the bursting shell had driven a piece of the red cloth of the trousers. The muscle protruded from the lips of the gaping orifice, a roll of whitish, mangled tissue.

Gilberte had to support herself against one of the uprights of the shed. Ah! that flesh, that poor flesh that was so white; now all torn and maimed and bleeding! Despite the horror and terror of the sight she could not turn away her eyes.

“Confound it!” Bouroche exclaimed, “they have made a nice mess here!”

He felt the foot and found it cold; the pulse, if any, was so feeble as to be undistinguishable. His face was very grave, and he pursed his lips in a way that was habitual with him when he had a more than usually serious case to deal with.

“Confound it,” he repeated, “I don’t like the looks of that foot!”

The captain, whom his anxiety had finally aroused from his semi-somnolent state, asked:

“What were you saying, major?”

Bouroche’s tactics, whenever an amputation became necessary, were never to appeal directly to the patient 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 an uproar, were expending their thunders on the adjacent fields; had that concentric fire been focused upon the city, had the batteries on those commanding heights once begun to play upon Sedan, it would have been reduced to ashes and pulverized into dust in less than fifteen minutes. But now the projectiles were again commencing to fall upon the houses, the crash that told of ruin and destruction was heard more frequently. One exploded in the Rue des Voyards, another grazed the tall chimney of the factory, and the bricks and mortar came tumbling to the ground directly in front of the shed where the surgeons were at work. Bouroche looked up and grumbled:

“Are they trying to finish our wounded for us? Really, this racket is intolerable.”

In the meantime an attendant had seized the captain’s leg, and the major, with a swift circular motion of his hand, made an incision in the skin below the knee and some two inches below the spot where he intended to saw the bone; then, still employing the same thin-bladed knife, that he did not change in order to get on more rapidly, he loosened the skin on the superior side of the incision and turned it back, much as one would peel an orange. But just as he was on the point of dividing the muscles a hospital steward came up and whispered in his ear:

“Number two has just slipped his cable.”

The major did not hear, owing to the fearful uproar.

“Speak up, can’t you! My ear drums are broken with their d – d cannon.”

“Number two has just slipped his cable.”

“Who is that, number two?”

“The arm, you know.”

“Ah, very good! Well, then, you can bring me number three, the jaw.”

And with wonderful dexterity, never changing his position, he cut through the muscles clean down to the bone with a single motion of his wrist. He laid bare the tibia and fibula, introduced between them an implement to keep them in position, drew the saw across them once, and they were sundered. And the foot remained in the hands of the attendant who was holding it.

The flow of blood had been small, thanks to the pressure maintained by the assistant higher up the leg, at the thigh. The ligature of the three arteries was quickly accomplished, but the major shook his head, and when the assistant had removed his fingers he examined the stump, murmuring, certain that the patient could not hear as yet: