“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!”