“If one cut, and cut deep enough, the leg could be saved, sire,” he said boldly.
Karl looked at him straightly; it was one brave man facing another; the great King and the great surgeon met on the common ground of fortitude and daring.
“Do your work then at once, M. Neumann,” said Karl. “Cut deeply and fear nothing.”
M. Neumann bowed, and directed his assistant to bring him his case of instruments.
Karl asked for another glass of water, and leaning back, drank it slowly.
Several other officers had now entered the tent including Poniatowski, the commander of King Stanislaus’ Swedish guards, who had followed Karl into the Ukraine out of affection for his person.
Karl showed some pleasure at his arrival, and held out his hand.
“Nay, sire, the last scouts sent out have not returned.”
“To-morrow we will attack again,” replied Karl. “We must,” he added, with an unusual earnestness in his tone, “take Poltava.”
“If we do not,” thought Count Piper cynically, “we are dead and damned.”
He left the tent and passed to his own more luxurious quarters; he was much too sick a man to be able to watch the operation to which the heroic King was so calmly submitting, and too full of an increasing agitation and consternation to be able to command his feelings.
“Yet why should I care?” he asked himself, “Patkul was shattered like that sixteen times.”
The news of the King’s wound had now spread through the army, and there was a growing uneasiness among these hitherto invincible veterans, now ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-armed.
Returning presently to the King’s tent Count Piper met General Rehnsköld with whom he was on bad terms, but who now stopped to tell him that the incisions had been made in the King’s foot, which was now being dressed.
The minister, pale, restless, and dispirited, passed again into the presence of the King.
Karl, who had held the limb steady with his own hands while the surgeon used the knife, and had displayed not the least emotion, now sat on his bed while Neumann bandaged the leg.
He had just given orders for an assault on the morrow; his voice had not shaken or his hand trembled, but his face was pallid and damp, his lips curved in a slightly distorted smile.
Count Piper advanced, but before he could speak the Prince of Wurtemberg entered the tent with every sign of agitation.