al
symptoms, caused more by the shocks of the wounds on the head than by
the wounds themselves.

He repeated Cosette's name for whole nights in the melancholy loquacity
of fever, and with the sombre obstinacy of agony. The extent of some of
the lesions presented a serious danger, the suppuration of large wounds
being always liable to become re-absorbed, and consequently, to kill
the sick man, under certain atmospheric conditions; at every change of
weather, at the slightest storm, the physician was uneasy.

"Above all things," he repeated, "let the wounded man be subjected to no
emotion." The dressing of the wounds was complicated and difficult,
the fixation of apparatus and bandages by cerecloths not having been
invented as yet, at that epoch. Nicolette used up a sheet "as big as the
ceiling," as she put it, for lint. It was not without difficulty
that the chloruretted lotions and the nitrate of silver overcame the
gangrene. As long as there was any danger, M. Gillenormand, seated in
despair at his grandson's pillow, was, like Marius, neither alive nor
dead.

Every day, sometimes twice a day, a very well dressed gentleman with
white hair,--such was the description given by the porter,--came to
inquire about the wounded man, and left a large package of lint for the
dressings.

Finally, on the 7th of September, four months to a day, after the
sorrowful night when he had been brought back to his grandfather in a
dying condition, the doctor declared that he would answer for Marius.
Convalescence began. But Marius was forced to remain for two months more
stretched out on a long chair, on account of the results called up by
the fracture of his collar-bone. There always is a last wound like that
which will not close, and which prolongs the dressings indefinitely, to
the great annoyance of the sick person.

However, this long illness and this long convalescence saved him
from all pursuit. In France, there is no wrath, not even of a public
character, which six months will not extinguish. Revolts, in the present
state of society, are so much the fault of every one, that they are
followed by a certain necessity of shutting the eyes.

Let us add, that the inexcusable Gisquet order, which enjoined doctors
to lodge information against the wounded, having outraged public
opinion, and not opinion alone, but the King first of all, the wounded
were covered and protected by this indignation; and, with the exception
of those who h