"It's all very fine," I said, "to chaff a fellow when you know that he is going to be sent for three years and a half to hard labour in Algeria. You are simply a brute, that's all I can say." "But suppose I don't know anything of the kind?" he replied, still smiling. "Why do you think so?" "Well, I suppose, if I am going to be tried before the _Conseil de discipline_----" "You ass!" he laughingly replied; "who spoke to you of _Conseil de discipline_? Aren't there other _Conseils_?" I looked astonished. "Have you never heard of the _Conseil de réforme_?" (Invalidation Commission) he said. "You don't mean to say----" "Yes," he replied, "I do mean to say that you are proposed for _invalidation_, and most likely you will cease to be a Dragoon this afternoon." My heart nearly stopped. The Corporal in charge of the infirmary came in at that moment (I had been put alone in a small ward of only two beds). "You've heard the news?" he said. I asked him how it had happened, and how I had not heard of it sooner. He proceeded to explain that, for the last two or three months past, our surgeon had meant to have me invalided, but that the Surgeon-major of the infantry, who was senior surgeon of the district, had always scratched my name off the list, as he had taken a particular dislike to me, and also wished to spite our surgeon, whom he hated. The previous day this infantry surgeon had been suddenly summoned to his mother's bedside in the South of France, so that Surgeon-major Lesage (our own surgeon) was in his absence the head of the medical service, and as such he had included me in the list of men proposed for _invalidation_. My joy knew no bounds, and my only fear was that the Commission would reject the proposal. I was taken to the hospital with five other Dragoons, and on arriving there we found half a dozen men from the Line regiment, who were also to be examined. At 11 A.M. the members of the Commission arrived, but we did not see them coming, as they entered the room where we were to be examined by another door. At the end of a few minutes a Dragoon was called in: he was the Breton of whom I spoke at the beginning of this book, who cried so bitterly at the thought of his cow. Since he had joined the regiment the poor fellow had gradually been sinking, and he was reduced to a mere skeleton. They did not keep him long, and when he came out he was laughing and crying hysterically. "Sergeant," he cried, "oh, Sergeant, let me kiss you! I am going to see her again, my cow, and the hens and the fields, the dear old house!" He had put his arms round the Sergeant's neck, and was sobbing like a child on his shoulders. He then sat on one of the benches, and kept saying, "I should have died, you know, if they had not sent me home. It's the Blessed Virgin--she has heard my prayers! I prayed so hard to her, and every Sunday I burnt a candle before her altar. I must go and thank her."