“I must especially express my gratitude to Miss Nightingale, who from her extraordinary intelligence and the good organisation of her kitchen procured me every material for making a commencement, and thus saved me at least one week’s sheer loss of time, as my model kitchen did not arrive until Saturday last.” The Lady-in-Chief found a very valuable ally in M. Soyer, who was eagerly ready to carry out her suggestions for the furtherance of various schemes for the better dietary arrangements for the sick, and who introduced new stoves and fuel and many other reforms of which she had hardly dared to dream in the first months of her work. To these new arrangements Lord William Paulet, the military Commandant, and Drs. Cummings, Menzies and Macgregor the principal medical officers, gave their entire approval, and Miss Nightingale had at length the satisfaction of seeing the culinary arrangements of the Scutari hospitals arranged on a model plan. During his stay M. Soyer obtained a glimpse into the “ministering angel” side of the lady whose excellent business faculty had filled him with admiration as he inspected stoves and boilers and discussed rations and diets in their rounds of the kitchens. He had been spending a jovial evening in the doctors’ quarters, and in making his way at two o’clock in the morning to his own apartment, he saw, at an angle of one of the long corridors filled with sick and wounded, a group revealed in silhouette by a faint light. A dying soldier was half reclining upon his bed, at the side of which sat Florence Nightingale pencilling down his last wishes home. A sister stood at her back holding a lighted candle. The group thus outlined, like a sombre study of Rembrandt, drew M. Soyer to the spot, and for a time unseen he observed the dying man pass his watch and trinkets into those tender womanly hands of the Lady-in-Chief, and heard the laboured gasp of the man to articulate the last message to wife and children. Then approaching Miss Nightingale, M. Soyer inquired as to the complaint of her patient, when she replied in French that the poor fellow had been given up by the doctors and was not likely to last many hours, and she was noting down his last wishes for his relatives. The incident enables one to realise how manifold were Miss Nightingale’s duties and how after laborious days she gave up hours of needed rest in order to comfort the dying. Soon after the opening of his model kitchen, M. Soyer received a visit from General Vivian, and while the General was there Miss Nightingale entered the kitchen, and an animated conversation ensued regarding hospital treatment. At the conclusion, M. Soyer relates that the General said, “M. Soyer, Miss Nightingale’s name and your own will be for ever associated in the archives of this memorable war.”