This same yearning was inspiring Marguerite when she came away from
her lessons. She was advancing from one overpowering dread to another,
accepting the first rudiments of surgery as the greatest of scientific
marvels. At the same time, she was astonished at the avidity with which
she was assimilating these hitherto unsuspected mysteries. Sometimes
with a funny assumption of assurance, she would even believe she had
mistaken her vocation.
"Who knows but what I was born to be a famous doctor?" she would
exclaim.
Her great fear was that she might lose her self-control when the time
came to put her newly acquired knowledge into practice. To see herself
before the foul odors of decomposing flesh, to contemplate the flow
of blood--a horrible thing for her who had always felt an invincible
repugnance toward all the unpleasant conditions of ordinary life! But
these hesitations were short, and she was suddenly animated by a dashing
energy. These were times of sacrifice. Were not the men snatched every
day from the comforts of sensuous existence to endure the rude life of
a soldier? . . . She would be, a soldier in petticoats, facing pain,
battling with it, plunging her hands into putrefaction, flashing like
a ray of sunlight into the places where soldiers were expecting the
approach of death.
She proudly narrated to Desnoyers all the progress that she was making
in the training school, the complicated bandages that she was learning
to adjust, sometimes over a mannikin, at others over the flesh of an
employee, trying to play the part of a sorely wounded patient.
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