“How do you feel?” you ask him. At the sound of your voice the wounded man’s eyes turn towards you, but he neither sees nor understands. “That burns my heart!” he murmurs. A little farther on an old soldier is changing his clothes. His face and his body are both of the same brown color, and as thin as a skeleton. One of his arms has been amputated at the shoulder. He is seated on his bed, he is out of danger, but from his dull, lifeless look, from his frightful thinness, from his wrinkled face, you see that this creature has already passed the greater part of his existence in suffering. On the opposite bed you see the pale, delicate, pain-shrivelled face of a woman whose cheeks are flushed with fever. “It is a sailor’s wife. A shell hit her on the foot while she was carrying dinner to her husband in the bastion,” says the guide. “Has it been amputated?” “Above the knee.” Now, if your nerves are strong, enter there at the left. It is the operating-room. There you see surgeons with pale and serious countenances, their arms blood-splashed to the elbows, beside the bed of a wounded man, who, stretched on his back with open eyes, is delirious under the influence of chloroform, and utters broken phrases, some unimportant, some touching. The surgeons are busy with their repulsive but beneficent task, amputation. You see the curved and keen blade penetrate the healthy white flesh. The wounded man suddenly comes to himself with heart-rending cries, with curses. The assistant surgeon throws the arm into a corner, while another wounded man on a stretcher who sees the operation turns and groans, more on account of the mental torture of expectation than from the physical pain he feels. You will witness these horrible, heart-rending scenes; you will see war without the brilliant and accurate alignment of troops, without music, without the drum-roll, without standards flying in the wind, without galloping generals--you will see it as it is, in blood, in suffering, and in death! Leaving this house of pain, you will experience a certain impression of well-being, you will take long breaths of fresh air, and will be glad to feel yourself in good health; but at the same time the contemplation of these misfortunes will have convinced you of your own insignificance, and you will go up into a bastion without hesitation. What are the sufferings and the death of an atom like me, you will ask yourself, in comparison with these innumerable sufferings and deaths? Besides, in a short time the sight of the pure sky, of the bright sun, of the pretty city, of the open church, of the soldiers coming and going in all directions, raises your spirits to their normal state. Habitual indifference, preoccupation with the present and with its petty interests, resume the ascendant. Perhaps you will meet on your way the funeral cortege of an officer--a red coffin followed by a band and by unfurled standards--and perhaps the roar of the cannonade on the bastion