The surgeon entered, a little man with an eager face, one Neumann, well known for his great skill and learning in his profession; he was closely followed by two others, and the King’s personal domestics.
“Gentlemen,” said the King, lifting his blue eyes now dark with pain, “let us see how far I am unlucky.”
He held out his foot to the servant as if he wished him to draw the boot off, but Neumann was instantly on his knees, and had taken the injured limb delicately between his capable hands.
It was necessary to cut the boot from the leg; when this was done it was found that the heel had been completely shattered, and that gangrene had set in; the instant opinion of the surgeons was that there was nothing but amputation to save the King’s life.
Karl sat silent, his foot covered with towels, and resting on a chair; the pain was beginning to make him giddy, and, for the first time in his life, he was realizing what it might be to be unfortunate.
Hitherto he had deemed himself immune from such a chance as this; he had never conceived of his splendid body as in any way failing him, and now perhaps he was a maimed man for life.
The officers looked dubiously at each other; to them this came as a crowning misfortune; only the spirit, presence, and fame of the King had kept the army together amid all its miseries, and now, at the climax of their disasters, when their very existence depended on the taking of the stores and ammunition of Poltava, the King was struck down.
Count Piper came hurrying to his master’s side; the minister felt that his worst prognostications, that for a time had been silenced by the steady successes of Karl, were now about to be realized, and he felt a deep inner anger at the obstinacy that had landed them in this lost country, cut off from help, without resources of any kind, threatened by an enemy who was in his own country, and three times their number.
Karl perhaps read some of these thoughts; he looked at his minister with his usual coldness.
“Piper,” he said, “they want to take my leg off.”
Neumann looked sharply at the King, who he knew must be suffering torture.
This self-control will cost him something later on, thought the surgeon.
He lifted the towels and looked again at the wound from which the purple blood was welling, and staining the piles of linen laid beneath.