"One more finished! Sponge the table well, Dubois, and let us go on to another," said the doctor, washing his hands in a large bowl.
Each time that he said, "Let us go on to another," the wounded moved uneasily, terrified by the screams they heard and the glittering knives they saw. But what was to be done? Every room in the farm, the granary, and the lofts was full. They were thus obliged to operate under the eyes of those who would soon in their turns come beneath the painful knife.
The operation had taken but a few seconds. Materne and his sons looked on for the same reason as one looks at other horrible things,—to know what they are like. Then in the corner, under the old china clock, they saw a heap of amputated limbs.
Nicolas's arm had already been cast among them, and a ball was now being extracted from the shoulder of a red-whiskered mountaineer of the Harberg. They opened deep gashes in his back; his flesh quivered, and the blood coursed down his powerful limbs.
The dog Pluto, behind the doctor, looked on with an attentive air, as though he understood, and from time to time stretched himself and yawned loudly.
Materne could look on no longer.
"Let us get out of this," said he.
Hardly were they outside the door, when they heard the doctor exclaim, "I have got the ball!" which must indeed have been satisfactory to the man from the Harberg.
Once outside, Materne, inhaling the cold air with, delight, exclaimed: "Only think that the same might have happened to us!"
"True," said Kasper; "to get a ball in one's head is nothing; but to be cut up in that style, and then to beg one's bread for the rest of one's days!"