Maurice Renard

To her despair was added a philosophical dejection, the feeling of every thinker who, venturing an inquisitive finger beneath the velvet of a throne, comes upon the coarse pinewood . . . And then it was she fell victim to a still more painful disquiet. The dead man they had just carted off, like a lump of matter no longer of any use, made it hideously plain how closely hospitals resemble factories. Under the scalpel, living flesh is treated there like wood under the plane or steel under the rolling-mill.