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.