I watched Professor Proby’s face. I was sure the honoured academician
was going to burst in again. The much-expected scientific controversy
was at last about to take place before my eyes, and ideas would cross
to and fro like glittering swords. I waited, holding my breath.
In grave silence, the academician replied:
“Very good, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_!”
I looked at everybody in turn. It seemed to me that a glove had been
thrown down, and that some one was going to pick it up with polite
audacity. But everybody looked vague and attentive. Professor Proby
went up to the Medical Inspector-General, and repeated mechanically:
“Very good, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_!”
The experience of thirty years’ practice vanished like a light that
went out.
M. Dufrêne went from bed to bed, heavy and majestic. “You made a
mistake in operating upon this man: you would have done better to
wait,” he said. Sometimes he approved: “Here is a result which
justifies our theories.” Most often his criticism was unrestrained:
“Why didn’t you use my apparatus--the Dufrêne apparatus? I wish to see
it used here.”
Then murmurs of assent and promises were heard. To everything Proby
replied invariably, “_Oui, Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”
Doctor Coupé got red and confused in trying to express appreciations of
the Inspector’s methods that seemed like excuses for his own.
I was watching M. Briavoine: he was nodding his head unceasingly, and
murmured in a dignified way:
“Obviously, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.... Of course,
_Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”
These words were always being repeated by everybody. They were repeated
as a refrain to almost every syllable and pronounced with a mumbling
mechanical promptitude, so that every sentence, and every reply, seemed
to end with this ritualistic rhythm: “_Mossinspecteurjral_.”
M. Dufrêne, more and more, gave expression to a kind of triumphant
lyric. He spoke of himself, of his works, with a growing volubility
and frequency. I thought he was disposed to qualify as “quite French,”
or “national,” and sometimes as “a work of genius,” methods and ideas
which were strictly his own. But this attempt to objectify things had
a very slight connection with modesty.
At one moment this towering personality came towards me without seeing
me with such vehemence that I nimbly got out of the way, as I would
before a train. I uttered hasty words, which were:
“I beg your pardon, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”
I had never, in the obscure life of a teacher, had the good fortune to
be in the presence of a military man of high rank and hear him speak.
I had only imagined, or come across in my reading, the virile outline
of the real old soldier. As I looked at this doctor in his military
boots and listened to his comments, I repeated to myself: “At last! the
real thing!” I was overwhelmed, crushed, but in spite of that I was
able to enjoy a feeling of security and confidence, and I always ended
by thinking: “The sheer impudence of it! Still, it takes some doing to
carry it off like that with such fellows as those doctors.”
The Medical Inspector-General had seized a fountain pen and was
covering the walls with prescriptions. He explained in emphatic
sentences what decisions ought to have been made and what action must
be taken. After each diagnosis, those who attended him chanted the
liturgic refrain: “_Oui, Mossinspecteurjral._”
“You must,” he was saying, “remember that you are soldiers
before everything. In putting on the uniform, you have put on
responsibilities. The independence of science has to yield before the
necessity of a uniform method. Personal experience has to give way to
discipline.”
With this simple injunction, personal experience yielded to the sway
of discipline. In one voice the least disciplined race in the world
replied:
“Of course, that is quite understood, _Monsieur le médecin
inspecteur-général_.”
The spectacled young man was standing near me, his arms rigidly at
attention and eyes front. I heard him whisper a strange thing to his
neighbour:
“Times have changed: every dog has his day.”
But his neighbour made a slight gesture of impatience, and the young
man took up again his stiff attitude of respect.
His remark was quite out of place, I thought. Yet it got me out of my
trance, and I began to reflect painfully on the incredible phenomenon
which was then occurring before my eyes.
And it was now entering upon a critical phase. The inspector was
examining the room where wounds were dressed.
“This room,” he said, “is large and well arranged. It was altered
according to instructions I made in 1895 when I was reorganising this
hospital. In fact, the whole place seems fairly satisfactory. Have you
any complaints to make, Coupé?”
Doctor Coupé blushed, was rather upset, and ended by saying:
“Nothing at all, _Mossinspecteurjral_.”
M. Briavoine, when asked in his turn, appeared to ponder, and then
replied that everything was as he wished.
Professor Proby, recovering from his coma, hastened to stammer:
“Ha! here everything is all right, _Mossinspecteurjral_.”
I remembered something M. Briavoine had said. I seemed to see him
again buttoning his linen coat and saying, “What have I to gain?”
Then I looked, greatly astonished, at his attentive face and
respectful bearing. In the same way I observed his colleagues and,
thinking of these men who had nothing to gain from their effacement
and who had given way so completely, so hopelessly, I experienced a
great admiration for them, and I had an insight into the meaning of
discipline. But the perceptions of the intellect are often betrayed by
other less noble impulses, for at the very same moment I could hardly
restrain an inclination to laugh.
M. Dufrêne had stopped in the middle of a dormitory. Fifty wounded men
were lying there: some talked in low voices, others groaned from time
to time, and others again were delirious. The Inspector-General clapped
his hands: at once the silence was complete. The least disciplined
race in the world stopped moaning; they ceased from their delirium.
“Soldiers!” he said in a formidable voice, “the Government of the
Republic has sent me to you to see how you are looked after. See how
the Government of the Republic cares for you.”
From one end of the room to the other heads were raised, necks were
stretched, and all those who had any breath left in them replied
together:
“Thank you, General.”
M. Dufrêne was going out. Behind him, the least disciplined race in the
world followed in good order down a staircase leading to the gardens.