Once below, however, the sight which the central garden of the factory presented momentarily arrested his steps. It was nearly one o'clock, and the wounded were crowding into the ambulance. There was already a deficiency of the regulation conveyances, both of the two and the four wheelers; and ammunition and forage waggons, vans for the transport of _matériel_, in fact, whatever vehicles it had been possible to requisition on the battlefield, now made their appearance. Eventually there even came tilted and other carts belonging to cultivators, taken from farms, and to which stray horses had been harnessed. And heaped together in all these vehicles were the men who had been picked up and summarily attended to by the field ambulance. Frightful was the unloading of these poor fellows, some greenly pallid, and others violet from congestion. Many of them had fainted, and others were raising shrill plaints. Some, who were struck with stupor, surrendered themselves to the attendants with a look of terror, whilst a few expired as soon as touched, unable to endure the slightest shaking. To such a degree was the ambulance being invaded that in another moment there would not remain a single unoccupied mattress in the spacious drying-hall, and Surgeon-Major Bouroche was accordingly ordering the attendants to utilise the large litter of straw which he had spread at one end of the structure. As yet, however, he and his assistants sufficed for the requisite operations. He had merely asked that a second table, with a mattress and some oilcloth, might be placed in the shed where he operated. Here an assistant swiftly applied a napkin dipped in chloroform to the patient's nose, the narrow steel blades flashed before the eyes; the saws gave out a faint rasping sound, and the blood flowed in sudden spurts, instantly arrested. The wounded were brought in and carried away amid a rapid coming-and-going, time being scarcely allowed for wiping the oilcloth with a sponge. And at the farther end of the lawn, behind a clump of laburnums, it had been necessary to form a kind of charnel-place where the attendants disembarrassed themselves of the dead, and whither they also went to throw the amputated legs and arms, all the remnants of flesh and bones remaining on the tables. Old Madame Delaherche and Gilberte, seated under one of the lofty trees, could no longer roll bands enough, and Bouroche, who passed by with his face flaming and his apron already crimson with blood, threw a packet of linen to Delaherche, exclaiming: 'Here! do something, make yourself useful.' 'Excuse me,' protested the manufacturer, 'but I must go out for news; we no longer know whether we are alive.' And then, lightly touching his wife's hair with his lips, 'My poor Gilberte,' he added, 'to think that a shell might set everything on fire here. It's frightful!'