At one moment this towering personality came towards me without seeing me with such vehemence that I nimbly got out of the way, as I would before a train. I uttered hasty words, which were: “I beg your pardon, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.” I had never, in the obscure life of a teacher, had the good fortune to be in the presence of a military man of high rank and hear him speak. I had only imagined, or come across in my reading, the virile outline of the real old soldier. As I looked at this doctor in his military boots and listened to his comments, I repeated to myself: “At last! the real thing!” I was overwhelmed, crushed, but in spite of that I was able to enjoy a feeling of security and confidence, and I always ended by thinking: “The sheer impudence of it! Still, it takes some doing to carry it off like that with such fellows as those doctors.” The Medical Inspector-General had seized a fountain pen and was covering the walls with prescriptions. He explained in emphatic sentences what decisions ought to have been made and what action must be taken. After each diagnosis, those who attended him chanted the liturgic refrain: “_Oui, Mossinspecteurjral._” “You must,” he was saying, “remember that you are soldiers before everything. In putting on the uniform, you have put on responsibilities. The independence of science has to yield before the necessity of a uniform method. Personal experience has to give way to discipline.” With this simple injunction, personal experience yielded to the sway of discipline. In one voice the least disciplined race in the world replied: “Of course, that is quite understood, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.” The spectacled young man was standing near me, his arms rigidly at attention and eyes front. I heard him whisper a strange thing to his neighbour: “Times have changed: every dog has his day.” But his neighbour made a slight gesture of impatience, and the young man took up again his stiff attitude of respect. His remark was quite out of place, I thought. Yet it got me out of my trance, and I began to reflect painfully on the incredible phenomenon which was then occurring before my eyes. And it was now entering upon a critical phase. The inspector was examining the room where wounds were dressed. “This room,” he said, “is large and well arranged. It was altered according to instructions I made in 1895 when I was reorganising this hospital. In fact, the whole place seems fairly satisfactory. Have you any complaints to make, Coupé?” Doctor Coupé blushed, was rather upset, and ended by saying: “Nothing at all, _Mossinspecteurjral_.” M. Briavoine, when asked in his turn, appeared to ponder, and then replied that everything was as he wished. Professor Proby, recovering from his coma, hastened to stammer: “Ha! here everything is all right, _Mossinspecteurjral_.”