“You’re not much hurt,” he said to Lannes as he finished.  “Your chief injury was shock, and that has passed.  I can keep down the fever and you’ll be ready for work very soon.  The high powered bullet makes a small and clean wound.  It tears scarcely at all.  Nor will your beauty be spoiled in the slightest, young sir.  Both orifices are under the full thickness of your hair.”

“I’m grateful for all your assurances,” said Lannes, his old indomitable smile appearing in his eyes, “but you’ll have to cure me fast, faster than you ever cured anybody before, because I’m a flying man, and I fly again tomorrow.”

“Not tomorrow.  In two or three days, perhaps—­”

“Yes, tomorrow, I tell you!  Nothing can keep me from it!  This army will march tonight!  I know it! and do you think such a wound as this can keep me here, when the fate of Europe is being decided?  I’d rise from these blankets and go with the army even if I knew that it would make me fall dead the next day!”

He spoke with such fierce energy that the surgeon who at first sternly forbade, looked doubtful and then acquiescent.

“Go, then,” he said, “if you can.  The fact that we have so many heroes may save us.”

He left John alone in the tent with Lannes.  The Frenchman regarded his comrade with a cool, assured gaze.

“John,” he said, “I shall be up in the Arrow tomorrow.  I’m not nervous and excited now, and I’ll not cause any fever in my wound.  Somebody will come in five minutes with food.  I shall eat a good supper, fall quietly to sleep, sleep soundly until night, then rise, refreshed and strong, and go about the work for which I’m best fitted.  My mind shall rule over my body.”

“I see you’re what we would call at home a Christian Scientist, and in your case when a mind like yours is brought to bear there’s something in it.”

The food appeared within the prescribed time, and both ate heartily.  John watched Lannes.  He knew that he would suffer agonies of mortification if he were not able to share in the great movement which so obviously was about to take place, and, as he looked, he felt a growing admiration for Philip’s immense power of self-control.

Mind had truly taken command of body.  Lannes ate slowly and with evident relish.  From without came many noises of a great army, but he refused to be disturbed or excited by them.  He spoke lightly of his life before the war, and of a little country home that the Lannes family had in Normandy.

“We own the two places, that and the home in the city,” he said.  “The house in Normandy is small, but it’s beautiful, hidden by flower gardens and orchards, with a tiny river just back of the last orchard.  Julie has spent most of her life there.  She and my mother would go there now, but it’s safer at Lyons or in the Midi.  A wonderful girl, Julie!  I hope, John, that you’ll come for a long stay with us after the war, among the Normandy orchards and roses.”