"Of him?" said Perichaud.
"Of the child. Is there danger?"
"Not a bit; but he'll be lame for life."
"Lame for life!"
"The femur is broken in two places, and splintered. The right leg will be two inches shorter than the left. All the surgeons in Paris could not do him any good."
"Then he will be useless for the army!" said Joubert. And I could hear the catching of his breath.
"He will never see service," replied Perichaud.
A loud smash of crockery came as a reply to the doctor's pronouncement. It was Joubert kicking a great Japanese jar on to the floor.
As for me, I had heard the death-sentence of my hopes. I would never wear a sword or lead a company into action. I would be a thing with a lame leg—a cripple. Fortunately, an opiate which the doctor had given me began to take effect. It did not make me sleepy, but it dulled my thoughts—some of them; others it made more bright. I lay listening to the doctor departing, and watching the red sunset which was dyeing Etiolles, and the woods, and the walls of my bedroom.
Then Joubert's words came into my head about Lichtenberg, and the duel the General had fought that morning with Baron Imhoff. I did not feel in the least uneasy about my father, and I was picturing the duel in the woods of Lichtenberg, when a sound through the open window came to my ears.