Hundreds have I
seen so scratched and pricked out of the world, Gerard, and tall fellows
too; but lo! if they have the luck to be wounded where no doctor can
be had, then they live; this too have I seen. Had I ever outlived that
field in Brabant but for my most lucky mischance, lack of chirurgery?
The frost chocked all my bleeding wounds, and so I lived. A chirurgeon
had pricked yet one more hole in this my body with his lance, and
drained my last drop out, and my spirit with it. Seeing them thus
distraught in bleeding of the bleeding soldier, I place no trust in
them; for what slays a veteran may well lay a milk-and-water bourgeois
low."
"This sounds like common sense," sighed Gerard languidly, "but no
need to raise your voice so; I was not born deaf, and just now I hear
acutely."
"Common sense! very common sense indeed," shouted the bad listener;
"why, this is a soldier; a brute whose business is to kill men, not cure
them." He added in very tolerable French, "Woe be to you, unlearned
man, if you come between a physician and his patient; and woe be to you,
misguided youth, if you listen to that man of blood."
"Much obliged," said Denys, with mock politeness; "but I am a true man,
and would rob no man of his name. I do somewhat in the way of blood, but
not worth mention in this presence. For one I slay, you slay a score;
and for one spoonful of blood I draw, you spill a tubful.
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