“There is nothing here that is needed.  Get me some linen; try and see if you can’t find some more mattresses; show my men where the pump is—­”

And they ran as if their life was at stake to do his bidding; were so active that they seemed to be ubiquitous.

The factory was admirably adapted for a hospital.  The drying-room was a particularly noticeable feature, a vast apartment with numerous and lofty windows for light and ventilation, where they could put in a hundred beds and yet have room to spare, and at one side was a shed that seemed to have been built there especially for the convenience of the operators:  three long tables had been brought in, the pump was close at hand, and a small grass-plot adjacent might serve as ante-chamber for the patients while awaiting their turn.  And the handsome old elms, with their deliciously cool shade, roofed the spot in most agreeably.

Bouroche had considered it would be best to establish himself in Sedan at the commencement, foreseeing the dreadful slaughter and the inevitable panic that would sooner or later drive the troops to the shelter of the ramparts.  All that he had deemed it necessary to leave with the regiment was two flying ambulances and some “first aids,” that were to send him in the casualties as rapidly as possible after applying the primary dressings.  The details of litter-bearers were all out there, whose duty it was to pick up the wounded under fire, and with them were the ambulance wagons and fourgons of the medical train.  The two assistant-surgeons and three hospital stewards whom he had retained, leaving two assistants on the field, would doubtless be sufficient to perform what operations were necessary.  He had also a corps of dressers under him.  But he was not gentle in manner and language, for all he did was done impulsively, zealously, with all his heart and soul.

“Tonnerre de Dieu! how do you suppose we are going to distinguish the cases from one another when they begin to come in presently?  Take a piece of charcoal and number each bed with a big figure on the wall overhead, and place those mattresses closer together, do you hear?  We can strew some straw on the floor in that corner if it becomes necessary.”

The guns were barking, preparing his work for him; he knew that at any moment now the first carriage might drive up and discharge its load of maimed and bleeding flesh, and he hastened to get all in readiness in the great, bare room.  Outside in the shed the preparations were of another nature:  the chests were opened and their contents arranged in order on a table, packages of lint, bandages, compresses, rollers, splints for fractured limbs, while on another table, alongside a great jar of cerate and a bottle of chloroform, were the surgical cases with their blood-curdling array of glittering instruments, probes, forceps, bistouries, scalpels, scissors, saws, an arsenal of implements of every imaginable shape adapted to pierce, cut, slice, rend, crush.  But there was a deficient supply of basins.