The disarticulation of a shoulder-joint in accordance with Lisfranc's[31] method was this time in question, a pretty operation as surgeons say, something elegant and prompt, lasting barely forty seconds from first to last. The patient was already being chloroformed, whilst an assistant caught hold of his shoulder with both hands; the fingers under the arm-pit, the thumbs up above. Thereupon Bouroche, who was armed with a large, long knife, called out, 'Set him up,' grasped the deltoid, transfixed the arm and severed the muscle; then stepping back, he detached the articulation at one stroke, and the arm fell, amputated in three movements. The assistant had immediately stopped the axillary artery with his thumbs. 'Lay him down again,' said Bouroche, laughing involuntarily as he proceeded with the ligation, for the operation had only taken him five-and-thirty seconds. All that now remained was to press the shreds of flesh down upon the wound like a shoulder strap. Altogether it was a pretty piece of work, notably on account of the danger, for, by the axillary artery, a man may lose all his blood in three minutes; besides which, the life of a patient under the influence of chloroform is invariably imperilled when he is raised from a recumbent to a sitting posture.
Frozen with horror. Delaherche had turned to go, but before he could do so the arm was already lying on the table. The man who had been amputated, a sturdy young peasant, emerged from his torpor and saw an attendant carrying his arm away, to throw it behind the laburnums. He hastily glanced at his shoulder, and, on seeing the bleeding stump, flew into a violent rage: 'Good heavens! that's a nice thing you've done!'
Bouroche, who was terribly tired, did not at first reply; but at last in a good-natured way he said: 'I did it for the best, I didn't want you to kick the bucket, my boy. Besides, I asked you beforehand if you'd have it off, and you said "yes."'
'I said "yes"? I said "yes"? Did I know what you meant?' Then, as his anger fell, he began shedding bitter tears, and gasped: 'What shall I ever be able to do with myself now?'
He was carried back to the litter of straw; the oilcloth and the table were violently washed; and the pailfuls of red water which were again flung across the lawn made the white bed of China asters quite bloody.
Delaherche, however, felt astonished at still hearing the cannonade. Why did it not stop? Rose's table-cloth must now be hoisted over the citadel. And yet it seemed as if the fire of the Prussian batteries were increasing in intensity. Such was the uproar, that one could no longer hear oneself; the commotion shook the least nervous from head to foot, amid growing anguish. These shocks which tore away the heart were suited neither to amputators nor amputated. They upset, fevered the entire ambulance to the point of exasperation.
'But it was all finished; so why do they keep on firing?' exclaimed Delaherche, listening anxiously, and imagining every second that the shot he heard would be the last.
Then, as he turned to remind Bouroche of the captain, he was astonished to find the surgeon lying on his stomach atop of a truss of straw, with both arms bared to the shoulders and plunged in a couple of pails full of icy water. In this fashion was the major refreshing himself, for he was both physically and morally worn out, crushed, overwhelmed by immense sadness and distress, experiencing one of those momentary agonies of the practitioner who realises his powerlessness. Bouroche, albeit, was a sturdy fellow, hard-skinned and stout-hearted. But the thought 'what avails it?' had flashed across his mind, and filled him with sorrow. He had been suddenly paralysed by the consciousness that he would never be able to accomplish everything; that it was not given to him to do so. So of what use was it all, since Death was bound to prove the stronger?
Two attendants came up, with Captain Beaudoin on a stretcher. 'Here's the captain, major,' Delaherche ventured to say.
Bouroche opened his eyes, took his arms out of the pails, shook them, and wiped them in the straw. Then, raising himself on his knees: 'Yes, dash it!' said he; 'come, come, the day is by no means over.'