His first words after the operation were:
"Will you please tell me how many minutes I was unconscious?"
XII
I first saw Derancourt in the room adjoining the chapel. A band of crippled men, returning from Germany after a long captivity, had just been brought in there.
There were some fifty of them, all looking with delighted eyes at the walls, the benches, the telephone, all the modest objects in this waiting-room, objects which are so much more attractive under the light of France than in harsh exile.
The waiting-room seemed to have been transformed into a museum of misery: there were blind men, legless and armless men, paralysed men, their faces ravaged by fire and powder.
A big fellow said, lifting his deformed arm with an effort:
"I tricked them; they thought to the end that I was really paralysed. I look well, but that's because they sent us to Constance for the last week, to fatten us up."
A dark, thin man was walking to and fro, towing his useless foot after him by the help of a string which ran down his trouser leg; and he laughed:
"I walk more with my fist than with my foot. Gentlemen, gentlemen, who would like to pull Punch's string?"