gasped more and more,
and became almost inarticulate, in his efforts. He was distressed. But
suddenly he got it. He screamed out very loud, relieved, satisfied,
triumphant, startling them all.

"_Ca y est, maintenant! Ca y est! C'est le bon Dieu a l'appareil_!" (All
right now! All right! It is the good God at the telephone!)

A drop of blood spotted the sheet, a sudden vivid drop which spread
rapidly, coming through. The surgeon raised himself.

"Finished here!" he exclaimed with satisfaction.

"Finished here," repeated the _Directrice_.

PARIS,
26 June, 1916.

A CITATION

As a person, Grammont amounted to very little. In private life, before
the war broke out, he had been an acrobat in the streets of Paris, and
after that he became a hotel boy in some little fifth-rate hotel over
behind the Gare St. Lazare. That had proved his undoing, for even the
fifth-rate French travelling salesmen and sharpers and adventurers who
patronized the hotel had money enough for him to steal. He stole a
little, favoured by his position as _garcon d'hotel_, and the theft had
landed him, not in jail, but in the _Bataillon d'Afrique_. He had served
in that for two years, doing his military service in the _Bataillon
d'Afrique_ instead of jail, while working off his five year sentence,
and then war being declared, his regiment was transferred from Morocco
to France, to Flanders, to the front line trenches, and in course of
time he arrived one day at the hospital with a piece of shell in his
spleen.

He was pretty ill when brought in, and if he had died promptly, as he
should have done, it would have been better. But it happened at that
time that there was a surgeon connected with the hospital who was bent
on making a reputation for himself, and this consisted in trying to
prolong the lives of wounded men who ought normally and naturally to
have died. So this surgeon worked hard to save Grammont, and certainly
succeeded in prolonging his life, and in prolonging his suffering, over
a very considerable portion of time. He worked hard over him, and he
used on him everything he could think of, everything that money could
buy. Every time he had a new idea as to treatment, no matter how costly
it might be, he mentioned it to the _Directrice_, who sent to Paris and
got it. All the while Grammont remained in bed, in very great agony, the
surgeon making copious notes on the case, noting that under such and
such circumstances, und