Chapter VII

The great, high, sombre hall, lighted only by four or five candles, where the surgeons moved about examining the wounded, was literally crammed with people. Stretcher-bearers continually brought new wounded and placed them side by side in rows on the ground. The crowd was so great that the wretches pushed against one another and bathed in their neighbors’ blood. Pools of stagnant gore stood in the empty places; from the feverish breath of several hundred men, the perspiration of the bearers, rose a heavy, thick, fetid atmosphere in which candles burned dimly in different parts of the hall. A confused murmur of groans, sighs, death-rattles, was interrupted by piercing cries. Sisters of Charity, whose calm faces did not express woman’s futile and tearful compassion, but an active and lively interest, glided here and there in the midst of bloody coats and shirts, sometimes striding over the wounded, carrying medicines, water, bandages, lint. Surgeons with their sleeves turned up, on their knees before the wounded, examined and probed the wounds by the flare of torches held by their assistants, in spite of the terrible cries and supplications of the patients. Seated at a little table beside the door a major wrote the number 532.

“Ivan Bogoïef, private in the third company of the regiment from C----, _fractura femuris complicata_!” shouted the surgeon, who was dressing a broken limb at the other end of the hall. “Turn him over.”

“Oh, oh, good fathers!” gasped the soldier, begging them to leave him in peace.

“_Perforatio capites._ Simon Neferdof, lieutenant-colonel of the infantry regiment from N----. Have a little patience, colonel. There is no way of--I shall be obliged to leave you there,” said a third, who was fumbling with a sort of hook in the head of the unfortunate officer.

“In Heaven’s name, get done quickly!”

“_Perforatio pectoris._ Sebastian Sereda, private--what regiment? But it is no use, don’t write it down. _Moritur._ Carry him off,” added the surgeon, leaving the dying man, who with upturned eyes was already gasping.

Forty or fifty stretcher-bearers awaited their burdens at the door. The living were sent to the hospital, the dead to the chapel. They waited in silence, and sometimes a sigh escaped them as they contemplated this picture.