that of desiring to
get rid of his patients at any cost. Every morning the follow-ing scene
took place:

"Ah, ha! the fine fellow," he cries, "what an air he has! good color,
no fever. Get up and go take a good cup of coffee; but no fooling,
you know! don't go running after the girls; I will sign for you your
_Exeat_; you will return to-morrow to your regiment."

Sick or not sick, he sent back three a day. That morning he stops in
front of me and says:

"Ah! saperlotte, my boy, you look better!"

I exclaim that never have I suffered so much.

He sounds my stomach. "But you are better," he murmurs; "the stomach is
not so hard." I protest--he seems astonished, the interne then says to
him in an undertone:

"We ought perhaps to give him an injection; and we have here neither
syringe nor stomach-pump; if we send him to the hospital--?"

"Come, now, that's an idea!" says the good man, delighted at getting rid
of me, and then and there he signs the order for my admission. Joyfully
I buckle on my knapsack, and under guard of one of the servants of the
lyceum I make my entrance at the hospital. I find Francis again! By
incredible good luck the St. Vincent corridor, where he sleeps, in
default of a room in the wards, contains one empty bed next to his. We
are at last reunited! In addition to our two beds, five cots stretch,
one after the other, along the yellow glazed walls. For occupants they
have a soldier of the line, two artillerymen, a dragoon, and a hussar.
The rest of the hospital is made up of certain old men, crack-brained
and weak-bodied, some young men, rickety or bandy-legged, and a great
number of soldiers--wrecks from MacMahon's army--who, after being
floated on from one military hospital to another, had come to be
stranded on this bank. Francis and I, we are the only ones who wear
the uniform of the Seine militia; our bed neighbors were good enough
fellows; one, to tell the truth, quite as insignificant as another; they
were, for the most part, the sons of peasants or farmers called to serve
under the flag after the declaration of war.

While I am taking off my vest, there comes a sister, so frail, so pretty
that I can not keep from looking at her; the beautiful big eyes! the
long blond lashes! the pretty teeth! She asks me why I have left the
lyceum; I explain to her in roundabout phrases how the absence of a
forcing pump caused me to be sent back from the college. She smiles
gently and says to me: "Ah,