Page 2242 - les-miserables

bandages by cerecloths not having been invented as yet, at
that epoch. Nicolette used up a sheet ‘as big as the ceiling,’
as she put it, for lint. It was not without difficulty that the
chloruretted lotions and the nitrate of silver overcame the
gangrene. As long as there was any danger, M. Gillenor-
mand, seated in despair at his grandson’s pillow, was, like
Marius, neither alive nor dead.
Every day, sometimes twice a day, a very well dressed
gentleman with white hair,—such was the description given
by the porter,— came to inquire about the wounded man,
and left a large package of lint for the dressings.
Finally, on the 7th of September, four months to a day,
after the sorrowful night when he had been brought back
to his grandfather in a dying condition, the doctor declared
that he would answer for Marius. Convalescence began. But
Marius was forced to remain for two months more stretched
out on a long chair, on account of the results called up by the
fracture of his collar-bone. There always is a last wound like
that which will not close, and which prolongs the dressings
indefinitely, to the great annoyance of the sick person.
However, this long illness and this long convalescence
saved him from all pursuit. In France, there is no wrath, not
even of a public character, which six months will not extin-
guish. Revolts, in the present state of society, are so much
the fault of every one, that they are followed by a certain ne-
cessity of shutting the eyes.
Let us add, that the inexcusable Gisquet order, which en-
joined doctors to lodge information against the wounded,
having outraged public opinion, and not opinion alone, but

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