Our medical attendant was a young coxcomb, fair-haired, regular-featured, and harsh-looking. A glass was fixed in his eye. About half-past nine his carriage, drawn by a pretty horse, pulled up; carelessly he threw the reins to his groom; he alighted and penetrated his domain. His Lordship sat down in an easy-chair, crossed his legs, took a haughty survey of the patients who called upon him, and spoke in a curt and supercilious tone. He was soon held to be a villainous fellow. "He is as wicked as the devil," a woman said, with a look of dismay. A great many of them wanted their children to be examined by the doctor. "I would rather die on straw than go to him for myself," a mother said ... "but, my poor little girl!" But what was worse, the Prussian doctor did not care a fig for sick children! We had been told that every baby was entitled to a litre of milk, which one of the farmers of the village would deliver to the mother on presentation of a note of hand. But a child above two years was allowed to drink milk only if the doctor deemed it expedient for its health. A woman we knew had a little girl not yet three. Six months before the whole family had fled in a shower of bullets and grape-shot, and for nearly a month had lived in the depths of a dark stone quarry with hardly anything to eat. Since then the child had been as white as wax; she had no strength at all, and she was always staring straight before her as if she had beheld horrible things. As she was penniless, the woman was forced to bring her child to this medicaster. "Sir, you see my little girl ... I think milk would do her good...." He had but to write a note, and she would have had it. "Milk! I haven't any! I keep no cows in my house!" and the doctor burst out laughing, thinking himself very witty. "Anyhow," the mother said with her teeth ground, "when he stays at home there is a brute beast in his house worse than a cow." Another beggar woman had twins about two years old. One of them ate soup and bread, and throve like couch-grass. The other, who ever since the family had left their native hamlet had fed on indigestible things, and had nowhere to lay her head, had grown pale and sickly. She had ceased to run alone, took no food, and pined away visibly. Her mother brought her to the doctor. "That child! What should I prescribe her? She is ailing on account of her being French. French children are all rickety and weakly. How am I to help it? Lay the blame on your race." Before leaving, the little doctor sometimes gave a glance--a single one--at the rooms of the hospital, then stepped into his carriage, took up the reins, cracked his whip, and as harsh-featured as ever put his horse to a gallop.