“Bon!” he exclaimed, eying me sharply through his gold-rimmed glasses. “Can you feel your hind-legs now, young man?”
I could feel them all too intensely, and I said so.
The surgeon began to turn down his shirt-sleeves and button his cuffs, saying, “You’re lucky to have a pain in your legs.” Turning to the Turco, he added, “Lift him!” And the giant rifleman picked me up and laid me in a long chair by the window.
“Your case is one of those amusing cases,” continued the surgeon, buckling on his sword and revolver; “very amusing, I assure you. As for the bullet, I could have turned it out with a straw, only it rested there exactly where it stopped the use of those long legs of yours!—a fine example of temporary reflex paralysis, and no hemorrhage to speak of—nothing to swear about, young man. By-the-way, you ought to go to bed for a few days.”
He clasped his short baldric over his smartly buttoned tunic. The room was shaking with the discharges of cannon.
“A millimetre farther and that bullet would have cracked your spine. Remember that and keep off your feet. Ouf! The cannon are tuning up!” as a terrible discharge shattered the glass in the window-panes beside me.
“Where am I, doctor?” I asked.
“Parbleu, in Morsbronn! Can’t you hear the orchestra, zim-bam-zim! The Prussians are playing their Wagner music for us. Here, swallow this. How do you feel now?”
“Sleepy. Did you say a day or two, doctor?”
“I said a week or two—perhaps longer. I’ll look in this evening if I’m not up to my chin in amputations. Take these every hour if in pain. Go to sleep, my son.”