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Title: The Enormous Room

Author: Edward Estlin Cummings

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8446] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 11, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENORMOUS ROOM ***

Produced by Eric Eldred, Thomas Berger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE ENORMOUS ROOM

by

E. E. CUMMINGS

* * * * *

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION

I. I BEGIN A PILGRIMAGE

II. EN ROUTE

III. A PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

IV. LE NOUVEAU

V. A GROUP OF PORTRAITS

VI. APOLLYON

VII. AN APPROACH TO THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS

VIII. THE WANDERER

IX. ZOO-LOO

X. SURPLICE

XI. JEAN LE NÈGRE

XII. THREE WISE MEN

XIII. I SAY GOOD-BYE TO LA MISÈRE

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION

"FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD, AND IS ALIVE AGAIN; HE WAS LOST; AND IS FOUND."

He was lost by the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps.

He was officially dead as a result of official misinformation.

He was entombed by the French Government.

It took the better part of three months to find him and bring him back to life--with the help of powerful and willing friends on both sides of the Atlantic. The following documents tell the story:

104 Irving Street, Cambridge, December 8, 1917.

President Woodrow Wilson, White House, Washington, D. C.

Mr. President:

It seems criminal to ask for a single moment of your time. But I am strongly advised that it would be more criminal to delay any longer calling to your attention a crime against American citizenship in which the French Government has persisted for many weeks--in spite of constant appeals made to the American Minister at Paris; and in spite of subsequent action taken by the State Department at Washington, on the initiative of my friend, Hon. ----.

The victims are two American ambulance drivers, Edward Estlin Cummings of Cambridge, Mass., and W---- S---- B----....

More than two months ago these young men were arrested, subjected to many indignities, dragged across France like criminals, and closely confined in a Concentration Camp at La Ferté Macé; where, according to latest advices they still remain--awaiting the final action of the Minister of the Interior upon the findings of a Commission which passed upon their cases as long ago as October 17.

Against Cummings both private and official advices from Paris state that there is no charge whatever. He has been subjected to this outrageous treatment solely because of his intimate friendship with young B----, whose sole crime is--so far as can be learned--that certain letters to friends in America were misinterpreted by an over-zealous French censor.

It only adds to the indignity and irony of the situation to say that young Cummings is an enthusiastic lover of France and so loyal to the friends he has made among the French soldiers, that even while suffering in health from his unjust confinement, he excuses the ingratitude of the country he has risked his life to serve by calling attention to the atmosphere of intense suspicion and distrust that has naturally resulted from the painful experience which France has had with foreign emissaries.

Be assured, Mr. President, that I have waited long--it seems like ages--and have exhausted all other available help before venturing to trouble you.

1. After many weeks of vain effort to secure effective action by the American Ambassador at Paris, Richard Norton of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps to which the boys belonged, was completely discouraged, and advised me to seek help here.

2. The efforts of the State Department at Washington resulted as follows:

i. A cable from Paris saying that there was no charge against Cummings and intimating that he would speedily be released.

ii. A little later a second cable advising that Edward Estlin Cummings had sailed on the Antilles and was reported lost.

iii. A week later a third cable correcting this cruel error and saying the Embassy was renewing efforts to locate Cummings--apparently still ignorant even of the place of his confinement.

After such painful and baffling experiences, I turn to you--burdened though I know you to be, in this world crisis, with the weightiest task ever laid upon any man.

But I have another reason for asking this favor. I do not speak for my son alone; or for him and his friend alone. My son has a mother--as brave and patriotic as any mother who ever dedicated an only son to a great cause. The mothers of our boys in France have rights as well as the boys themselves. My boy's mother had a right to be protected from the weeks of horrible anxiety and suspense caused by the inexplicable arrest and imprisonment of her son. My boy's mother had a right to be spared the supreme agony caused by a blundering cable from Paris saying that he had been drowned by a submarine. (An error which Mr. Norton subsequently cabled that he had discovered six weeks before.) My boy's mother and all American mothers have a right to be protected against all needless anxiety and sorrow.

Pardon me, Mr. President, but if I were President and your son were suffering such prolonged injustice at the hands of France; and your son's mother had been needlessly kept in Hell as many weeks as my boy's mother has--I would do something to make American citizenship as sacred in the eyes of Frenchmen as Roman citizenship was in the eyes of the ancient world. Then it was enough to ask the question, "Is it lawful to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?" Now, in France, it seems lawful to treat like a condemned criminal a man that is an American, uncondemned and admittedly innocent!

Very respectfully, EDWARD CUMMINGS

This letter was received at the White House. Whether it was received with sympathy or with silent disapproval is still a mystery. A Washington official, a friend in need and a friend indeed in these trying experiences, took the precaution to have it delivered by messenger. Otherwise, fear that it had been "lost in the mail" would have added another twinge of uncertainty to the prolonged and exquisite tortures inflicted upon parents by alternations of misinformation and official silence. Doubtless the official stethoscope was on the heart of the world just then; and perhaps it was too much to expect that even a post-card would be wasted on private heart-aches.

In any event this letter told where to look for the missing boys--something the French government either could not or would not disclose, in spite of constant pressure by the American Embassy at Paris and constant efforts by my friend Richard Norton, who was head of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance organization from which they had been abducted.

Release soon followed, as narrated in the following letter to Major ---- of the staff of the Judge Advocate General in Paris.

February 20, 1921.

My dear ----

Your letter of January 30th, which I have been waiting for with great interest ever since I received your cable, arrived this morning. My son arrived in New York on January 1st. He was in bad shape physically as a result of his imprisonment: very much under weight, suffering from a bad skin infection which he had acquired at the concentration camp. However, in view of the extraordinary facilities which the detention camp offered for acquiring dangerous diseases, he is certainly to be congratulated on having escaped with one of the least harmful. The medical treatment at the camp was quite in keeping with the general standards of sanitation there; with the result that it was not until he began to receive competent surgical treatment after his release and on board ship that there was much chance of improvement. A month of competent medical treatment here seems to have got rid of this painful reminder of official hospitality. He is, at present, visiting friends in New York. If he were here, I am sure he would join with me and with his mother in thanking you for the interest you have taken and the efforts you have made.

W---- S---- B---- is, I am happy to say, expected in New York this week by the S. S. Niagara. News of his release and subsequently of his departure came by cable. What you say about the nervous strain under which he was living, as an explanation of the letters to which the authorities objected, is entirely borne out by first-hand information. The kind of badgering which the youth received was enough to upset a less sensitive temperament. It speaks volumes for the character of his environment that such treatment aroused the resentment of only one of his companions, and that even this manifestation of normal human sympathy was regarded as "suspicious." If you are right in characterizing B----'s condition as more or less hysterical, what shall we say of the conditions which made possible the treatment which he and his friend received? I am glad B---- wrote the very sensible and manly letter to the Embassy, which you mention. After I have had an opportunity to converse with him, I shall be in better position to reach a conclusion in regard to certain matters about which I will not now express an opinion.

I would only add that I do not in the least share your complacency in regard to the treatment which my son received. The very fact that, as you say, no charges were made and that he was detained on suspicion for many weeks after the Commission passed on his case and reported to the Minister of the Interior that he ought to be released, leads me to a conclusion exactly opposite to that which you express. It seems to me impossible to believe that any well-ordered government would fail to acknowledge such action to have been unreasonable. Moreover, "detention on suspicion" was a small part of what actually took place. To take a single illustration, you will recall that after many weeks' persistent effort to secure information, the Embassy was still kept so much in the dark about the facts, that it cabled the report that my son had embarked on The Antilles and was reported lost. And when convinced of that error, the Embassy cabled that it was renewing efforts to locate my son. Up to that moment, it would appear that the authorities had not even condescended to tell the United States Embassy where this innocent American citizen was confined; so that a mistaken report of his death was regarded as an adequate explanation of his disappearance. If I had accepted this report and taken no further action, it is by no means certain that he would not be dead by this time.

I am free to say, that in my opinion no self-respecting government could allow one of its own citizens, against whom there has been no accusation brought, to be subjected to such prolonged indignities and injuries by a friendly government without vigorous remonstrance. I regard it as a patriotic duty, as well as a matter of personal self-respect, to do what I can to see that such remonstrance is made. I still think too highly both of my own government and of the government of France to believe that such an untoward incident will fail to receive the serious attention it deserves. If I am wrong, and American citizens must expect to suffer such indignities and injuries at the hands of other governments without any effort at remonstrance and redress by their own government, I believe the public ought to know the humiliating truth. It will make interesting reading. It remains for my son to determine what action he will take.

I am glad to know your son is returning. I am looking forward with great pleasure to conversing with him.

I cannot adequately express my gratitude to you and to other friends for the sympathy and assistance I have received. If any expenses have been incurred on my behalf or on behalf of my son, I beg you to give me the pleasure of reimbursing you. At best, I must always remain your debtor.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

EDWARD CUMMINGS

I yield to no one in enthusiasm for the cause of France. Her cause was our cause and the cause of civilization; and the tragedy is that it took us so long to find it out. I would gladly have risked my life for her, as my son risked his and would have risked it again had not the departure of his regiment overseas been stopped by the armistice.

France was beset with enemies within as well as without. Some of the "suspects" were members of her official household. Her Minister of Interior was thrown into prison. She was distracted with fear. Her existence was at stake. Under such circumstances excesses were sure to be committed. But it is precisely at such times that American citizens most need and are most entitled to the protection of their own government.

EDWARD CUMMINGS

* * * * *

THE ENORMOUS ROOM

I

I BEGIN A PILGRIMAGE

In October, 1917, we had succeeded, my friend B. and I, in dispensing with almost three of our six months' engagement as Voluntary Drivers, Sanitary Section 21, Ambulance Norton Harjes, American Red Cross, and at the moment which subsequent experience served to capitalize, had just finished the unlovely job of cleaning and greasing (nettoyer is the proper word) the own private flivver of the chief of section, a gentleman by the convenient name of Mr. A. To borrow a characteristic-cadence from Our Great President: the lively satisfaction which we might be suspected of having derived from the accomplishment of a task so important in the saving of civilization from the clutches of Prussian tyranny was in some degree inhibited, unhappily, by a complete absence of cordial relations between the man whom fate had placed over us and ourselves. Or, to use the vulgar American idiom, B. and I and Mr. A. didn't get on well. We were in fundamental disagreement as to the attitude which we, Americans, should uphold toward the poilus in whose behalf we had volunteered assistance, Mr. A. maintaining "you boys want to keep away from those dirty Frenchmen" and "we're here to show those bastards how they do things in America," to which we answered by seizing every opportunity for fraternization. Inasmuch as eight "dirty Frenchmen" were attached to the section in various capacities (cook, provisioner, chauffeur, mechanician, etc.) and the section itself was affiliated with a branch of the French army, fraternization was easy. Now when he saw that we had not the slightest intention of adopting his ideals, Mr. A. (together with the sous-lieutenant who acted as his translator--for the chief's knowledge of the French language, obtained during several years' heroic service, consisted for the most part in "Sar var," "Sar marche," and "Deet donk moan vieux") confined his efforts to denying us the privilege of acting as drivers, on the ground that our personal appearance was a disgrace to the section. In this, I am bound to say, Mr. A. was but sustaining the tradition conceived originally by his predecessor, a Mr. P., a Harvard man, who until his departure from Vingt-et-Un succeeded in making life absolutely miserable for B. and myself. Before leaving this painful subject I beg to state that, at least as far as I was concerned, the tradition had a firm foundation in my own predisposition for uncouthness plus what Le Matin (if we remember correctly) cleverly nicknamed La Boue Héroïque.

Having accomplished the nettoyage (at which we were by this time adepts, thanks to Mr. A.'s habit of detailing us to wash any car which its driver and aide might consider too dirty a task for their own hands) we proceeded in search of a little water for personal use. B. speedily finished his ablutions. I was strolling carelessly and solo from the cook-wagon toward one of the two tents--which protestingly housed some forty huddling Americans by night--holding in my hand an historic morceau de chocolat, when a spick, not to say span, gentleman in a suspiciously quiet French uniform allowed himself to be driven up to the bureau, by two neat soldiers with tin derbies, in a Renault whose painful cleanliness shamed my recent efforts. This must be a general at least, I thought, regretting the extremely undress character of my uniform, which uniform consisted of overalls and a cigarette.

Having furtively watched the gentleman alight and receive a ceremonious welcome from the chief and the aforesaid French lieutenant who accompanied the section for translatory reasons, I hastily betook myself to one of the tents, where I found B. engaged in dragging all his belongings into a central pile of frightening proportions. He was surrounded by a group of fellow-heroes who hailed my coming with considerable enthusiasm. "Your bunky's leaving" said somebody. "Going to Paris" volunteered a man who had been trying for three months to get there. "Prison you mean" remarked a confirmed optimist whost disposition had felt the effects of French climate.

Albeit confused by the eloquence of B.'s unalterable silence, I immediately associated his present predicament with the advent of the mysterious stranger, and forthwith dashed forth, bent on demanding from one of the tin-derbies the high identity and sacred mission of this personage. I knew that with the exception of ourselves everyone in the section had been given his seven days' leave--even two men who had arrived later than we and whose turn should, consequently, have come after ours. I also knew that at the headquarters of the Ambulance, 7 rue François Premier, was Monsieur Norton, the supreme head of the Norton Harjes fraternity, who had known my father in other days. Putting two and two together I decided that this potentate had sent an emissary to Mr. A. to demand an explanation of the various and sundry insults and indignities to which I and my friend had been subjected, and more particularly to secure our long-delayed permission. Accordingly I was in high spirits as I rushed toward the bureau.

I didn't have to go far. The mysterious one, in conversation with monsieur le sous-lieutenant, met me half-way. I caught the words: "And Cummings" (the first and last time that my name was correctly pronounced by a Frenchman), "where is he?"

"Present," I said, giving a salute to which neither of them paid the slightest attention.

"Ah yes" impenetrably remarked the mysterious one in positively sanitary English. "You shall put all your baggage in the car, at once"--then, to tin-derby-the-first, who appeared in an occult manner at his master's elbow--"Go with him, get his baggage, at once."

My things were mostly in the vicinity of the cuisine, where lodged the cuisinier, mechanician, menusier, etc., who had made room for me (some ten days since) on their own initiative, thus saving me the humiliation of sleeping with nineteen Americans in a tent which was always two-thirds full of mud. Thither I led the tin-derby, who scrutinised everything with surprising interest. I threw mes affaires hastily together (including some minor accessories which I was going to leave behind, but which the t-d bade me include) and emerged with a duffle-bag under one arm and a bed-roll under the other, to encounter my excellent friends, the "dirty Frenchmen," aforesaid. They all popped out together from one door, looking rather astonished. Something by way of explanation as well as farewell was most certainly required, so I made a speech in my best French:

"Gentlemen, friends, comrades--I am going away immediately and shall be guillotined tomorrow."

--"Oh hardly guillotined I should say," remarked t-d, in a voice which froze my marrow despite my high spirits; while the cook and carpenter gaped audibly and the mechanician clutched a hopelessly smashed carburetor for support.

One of the section's voitures, a F.I.A.T., was standing ready. General Nemo sternly forbade me to approach the Renault (in which B.'s baggage was already deposited) and waved me into the F.I.A.T., bed, bed-roll and all; whereupon t-d leaped in and seated himself opposite me in a position of perfect unrelaxation, which, despite my aforesaid exultation at quitting the section in general and Mr. A. in particular, impressed me as being almost menacing. Through the front window I saw my friend drive away with t-d Number 2 and Nemo; then, having waved hasty farewell to all les Américains that I knew--three in number--and having exchanged affectionate greetings with Mr. A. (who admitted he was very sorry indeed to lose us), I experienced the jolt of the clutch--and we were off in pursuit.

Whatever may have been the forebodings inspired by t-d Number 1's attitude, they were completely annihilated by the thrilling joy which I experienced on losing sight of the accursed section and its asinine inhabitants--by the indisputable and authentic thrill of going somewhere and nowhere, under the miraculous auspices of someone and no one--of being yanked from the putrescent banalities of an official non-existence into a high and clear adventure, by a deus ex machina in a grey-blue uniform, and a couple of tin derbies. I whistled and sang and cried to my vis-à-vis: "By the way, who is yonder distinguished gentleman who has been so good as to take my friend and me on this little promenade?"--to which, between lurches of the groaning F.I.A.T., t-d replied awesomely, clutching at the window for the benefit of his equilibrium: "Monsieur le Ministre de Sureté de Noyon."

Not in the least realizing what this might mean, I grinned. A responsive grin, visiting informally the tired cheeks of my confrère, ended by frankly connecting his worthy and enormous ears which were squeezed into oblivion by the oversize casque. My eyes, jumping from those ears, lit on that helmet and noticed for the first time an emblem, a sort of flowering little explosion, or hair-switch rampant. It seemed to me very jovial and a little absurd.

"We're on our way to Noyon, then?"

T-d shrugged his shoulders.

Here the driver's hat blew off. I heard him swear, and saw the hat sailing in our wake. I jumped to my feet as the F.I.A.T. came to a sudden stop, and started for the ground--then checked my flight in mid-air and landed on the seat, completely astonished. T-d's revolver, which had hopped from its holster at my first move, slid back into its nest. The owner of the revolver was muttering something rather disagreeable. The driver (being an American of Vingt-et-Un) was backing up instead of retrieving his cap in person. My mind felt as if it had been thrown suddenly from fourth into reverse. I pondered and said nothing.

On again--faster, to make up for lost time. On the correct assumption that t-d does not understand English the driver passes the time of day through the minute window:

"For Christ's sake, Cummings, what's up?"

"You got me," I said, laughing at the delicate naiveté of the question.

"Did y' do something to get pinched?"

"Probably," I answered importantly and vaguely, feeling a new dignity.

"Well, if you didn't, maybe B---- did."

"Maybe," I countered, trying not to appear enthusiastic. As a matter of fact I was never so excited and proud. I was, to be sure, a criminal! Well, well, thank God that settled one question for good and all--no more Section Sanitaire for me! No more Mr. A. and his daily lectures on cleanliness, deportment, etc.! In spite of myself I started to sing. The driver interrupted:

"I heard you asking the tin lid something in French. Whadhesay?"

"Said that gink in the Renault is the head cop of Noyon," I answered at random.

"GOODNIGHT. Maybe we'd better ring off, or you'll get in wrong with"--he indicated t-d with a wave of his head that communicated itself to the car in a magnificent skid; and t-d's derby rang out as the skid pitched t-d the length of the F.I.A.T.

"You rang the bell then," I commented--then to t-d: "Nice car for the wounded to ride in," I politely observed. T-d answered nothing....

Noyon.

We drive straight up to something which looks unpleasantly like a feudal dungeon. The driver is now told to be somewhere at a certain time, and meanwhile to eat with the Head Cop, who may be found just around the corner--(I am doing, the translating for t-d)--and, oh yes, it seems that the Head Cop has particularly requested the pleasure of this distinguished American's company at déjeuner.

"Does he mean me?" the driver asked innocently.

"Sure," I told him.

Nothing is said of B. or me.

Now, cautiously, t-d first and I a slow next, we descend. The F.I.A.T. rumbles off, with the distinguished one's backward-glaring head poked out a yard more or less and that distinguished face so completely surrendered to mystification as to cause a large laugh on my part.

"You are hungry?"

It was the erstwhile-ferocious speaking. A criminal, I remembered, is somebody against whom everything he says and does is very cleverly made use of. After weighing the matter in my mind for some moments I decided at all cost to tell the truth, and replied:

"I could eat an elephant."

Hereupon t-d lead me to the Kitchen Itself, set me to eat upon a stool, and admonished the cook in a fierce voice:

"Give this great criminal something to eat in the name of the French Republic!"

And for the first time in three months I tasted Food.

T-d seated himself beside me, opened a huge jack-knife, and fell to, after first removing his tin derby and loosening his belt.

One of the pleasantest memories connected with that irrevocable meal is of a large, gentle, strong woman who entered in a hurry, and seeing me cried out:

"What is it?"

"It's an American, my mother," t-d answered through fried potatoes.

"Why is he here?" the woman touched me on the shoulder, and satisfied herself that I was real.

"The good God is doubtless acquainted with the explanation," said t-d pleasantly. "Not myself being the--"

"Ah, mon pauvre" said this very beautiful sort of woman. "You are going to be a prisoner here. Everyone of the prisoners has a marraine, do you understand? I am their marraine. I love them and look after them. Well, listen: I will be your marraine, too."

I bowed and looked around for something to pledge her in. T-d was watching. My eyes fell on a huge glass of red pinard. "Yes, drink," said my captor, with a smile. I raised my huge glass.

"A la santé de ma marraine charmante!"

--This deed of gallantry quite won the cook (a smallish, agile Frenchman) who shovelled several helps of potatoes on my already empty plate. The tin derby approved also: "That's right, eat, drink, you'll need it later perhaps." And his knife guillotined another delicious hunk of white bread.

At last, sated with luxuries, I bade adieu to my marraine and allowed t-d to conduct me (I going first, as always) upstairs and into a little den whose interior boasted two mattresses, a man sitting at the table, and a newspaper in the hands of the man.

"C'est un Américain," t-d said by way of introduction. The newspaper detached itself from the man who said: "He's welcome indeed: make yourself at home, Mr. American"--and bowed himself out. My captor immediately collapsed on one mattress.

I asked permission to do the same on the other, which favor was sleepily granted. With half-shut eyes my Ego lay and pondered: the delicious meal it had just enjoyed; what was to come; the joys of being a great criminal ... then, being not at all inclined to sleep, I read Le Petit Parisien quite through, even to Les Voies Urinaires.

Which reminded me--and I woke up t-d and asked: "May I visit the vespasienne?"

"Downstairs," he replied fuzzily, and readjusted his slumbers.

There was no one moving about in the little court. I lingered somewhat on the way upstairs. The stairs were abnormally dirty. When I reentered, t-d was roaring to himself. I read the journal through again. It must have been about three o'clock.

Suddenly t-d woke up, straightened and buckled his personality, and murmured: "It's time, come on."

Le bureau de Monsieur le Ministre was just around the corner, as it proved. Before the door stood the patient F.I.A.T. I was ceremoniously informed by t-d that we would wait on the steps.

Well! Did I know any more?--the American driver wanted to know.

Having proved to my own satisfaction that my fingers could still roll a pretty good cigarette, I answered: "No," between puffs.

The American drew nearer and whispered spectacularly: "Your friend is upstairs. I think they're examining him."

T-d got this; and though his rehabilitated dignity had accepted the "makin's" from its prisoner, it became immediately incensed:

"That's enough," he said sternly.

And dragged me tout-à-coup upstairs, where I met B. and his t-d coming out of the bureau door. B. looked peculiarly cheerful. "I think we're going to prison all right," he assured me.

Braced by this news, poked from behind by my t-d, and waved on from before by M. le Ministre himself, I floated vaguely into a very washed, neat, business-like and altogether American room of modest proportions, whose door was immediately shut and guarded on the inside by my escort.

Monsieur le Ministre said:

"Lift your arms."

Then he went through my pockets. He found cigarettes, pencils, a jack-knife and several francs. He laid his treasures on a clean table and said: "You are not allowed to keep these. I shall be responsible." Then he looked me coldly in the eye and asked if I had anything else?

I told him that I believed I had a handkerchief.

He asked me: "Have you anything in your shoes?"

"My feet," I said, gently.

"Come this way," he said frigidly, opening a door which I had not remarked. I bowed in acknowledgment of the courtesy, and entered room number 2.

I looked into six eyes which sat at a desk.

Two belonged to a lawyerish person in civilian clothes, with a bored expression, plus a moustache of dreamy proportions with which the owner constantly imitated a gentleman ringing for a drink. Two appertained to a splendid old dotard (a face all ski-jumps and toboggan slides), on whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted. Numbers five and six had reference to Monsieur, who had seated himself before I had time to focus my slightly bewildered eyes.

Monsieur spoke sanitary English, as I have said.

"What is your name?"--"Edward E. Cummings."

--"Your second name?"--"E-s-t-l-i-n," I spelled it for him.--"How do you say that?"--I didn't understand.--"How do you say your name?"--"Oh," I said; and pronounced it. He explained in French to the moustache that my first name was Edouard, my second "A-s-tay-l-ee-n," and my third "Kay-umm-ee-n-gay-s"--and the moustache wrote it all down. Monsieur then turned to me once more:

"You are Irish?"--"No," I said, "American."--"You are Irish by family?"--"No, Scotch."--"You are sure that there was never an Irishman in your parents?"--"So far as I know," I said, "there never was an Irishman there."--"Perhaps a hundred years back?" he insisted.--"Not a chance," I said decisively. But Monsieur was not to be denied: "Your name it is Irish?"--"Cummings is a very old Scotch name," I told him fluently, "it used to be Comyn. A Scotchman named The Red Comyn was killed by Robert Bruce in a church. He was my ancestor and a very well-known man."--"But your second name, where have you got that?"--"From an Englishman, a friend of my father." This statement seemed to produce a very favorable impression in the case of the rosette, who murmured: "Un ami de son père, un Anglais, bon!" several times. Monsieur, quite evidently disappointed, told the moustache in French to write down that I denied my Irish parentage; which the moustache did.

"What does your father in America?"--"He is a minister of the gospel," I answered. "Which church?"--"Unitarian." This puzzled him. After a moment he had an inspiration: "That is the same as a Free Thinker?"--I explained in French that it wasn't and that mon père was a holy man. At last Monsieur told the moustache to write: Protestant; and the moustache obediently did so.

From this point on our conversation was carried on in French, somewhat to the chagrin of Monsieur, but to the joy of the rosette and with the approval of the moustache. In answer to questions, I informed them that I was a student for five years at Harvard (expressing great surprise that they had never heard of Harvard), that I had come to New York and studied painting, that I had enlisted in New York as conducteur voluntaire, embarking for France shortly after, about the middle of April.

Monsieur asked: "You met B---- on the paquebot?" I said I did.

Monsieur glanced significantly around. The rosette nodded a number of times. The moustache rang.

I understood that these kind people were planning to make me out the innocent victim of a wily villain, and could not forbear a smile. C'est rigoler, I said to myself; they'll have a great time doing it.

"You and your friend were together in Paris?" I said "yes." "How long?" "A month, while we were waiting for our uniforms."

A significant look by Monsieur, which is echoed by his confrères.

Leaning forward Monsieur asked coldly and carefully: "What did you do in Paris?" to which I responded briefly and warmly: "We had a good time."

This reply pleased the rosette hugely. He wagged his head till I thought it would have tumbled off. Even the mustache seemed amused. Monsieur le Ministre de la Sureté de Noyon bit his lip. "Never mind writing that down," he directed the lawyer. Then, returning to the charge:

"You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?"

I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. "Yes, we certainly did."

He asked: "Why?"--so I sketched "Lieutenant" A. in vivid terms, making use of certain choice expressions with which one of the "dirty Frenchmen" attached to the section, a Parisien, master of argot, had furnished me. My phraseology surprised my examiners, one of whom (I think the moustache) observed sarcastically that I had made good use of my time in Paris.

Monsieur le Ministre asked: Was it true (a) that B. and I were always together and (b) preferred the company of the attached Frenchmen to that of our fellow-Americans?--to which I answered in the affirmative. Why? he wanted to know. So I explained that we felt that the more French we knew and the better we knew the French the better for us; expatiating a bit on the necessity for a complete mutual understanding of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races if victory was to be won.

Again the rosette nodded with approbation.

Monsieur le Ministre may have felt that he was losing his case, for he played his trump card immediately: "You are aware that your friend has written to friends in America and to his family very bad letters." "I am not," I said.

In a flash I understood the motivation of Monsieur's visit to Vingt-et-Un: the French censor had intercepted some of B.'s letters, and had notified Mr. A. and Mr. A.'s translator, both of whom had thankfully testified to the bad character of B. and (wishing very naturally to get rid of both of us at once) had further averred that we were always together and that consequently I might properly be regarded as a suspicious character. Whereupon they had received instructions to hold us at the section until Noyon could arrive and take charge--hence our failure to obtain our long-overdue permission.

"Your friend," said Monsieur in English, "is here a short while ago. I ask him if he is up in the aeroplane flying over Germans will he drop the bombs on Germans and he say no, he will not drop any bombs on Germans."

By this falsehood (such it happened to be) I confess that I was nonplussed. In the first place, I was at the time innocent of third-degree methods. Secondly, I remembered that, a week or so since, B., myself and another American in the section had written a letter--which, on the advice of the sous-lieutenant who accompanied Vingt-et-Un as translator, we had addressed to the Under-Secretary of State in French Aviation--asking that inasmuch as the American Government was about to take over the Red Cross (which meant that all the Sanitary Sections would be affiliated with the American, and no longer with the French, Army) we three at any rate might be allowed to continue our association with the French by enlisting in l'Esquadrille Lafayette. One of the "dirty Frenchmen" had written the letter for us in the finest language imaginable, from data supplied by ourselves.

"You write a letter, your friend and you, for French aviation?"

Here I corrected him: there were three of us; and why didn't he have the third culprit arrested, might I ask? But he ignored this little digression, and wanted to know: Why not American aviation?--to which I answered: "Ah, but as my friend has so often said to me, the French are after all the finest people in the world."

This double-blow stopped Noyon dead, but only for a second.

"Did your friend write this letter?"--"No," I answered truthfully.--"Who did write it?"--"One of the Frenchmen attached to the section."--"What is his name?"--"I'm sure I don't know," I answered; mentally swearing that, whatever might happen to me the scribe should not suffer. "At my urgent request," I added.

Relapsing into French, Monsieur asked me if I would have any hesitation in dropping bombs on Germans? I said no, I wouldn't. And why did I suppose I was fitted to become aviator? Because, I told him, I weighed 135 pounds and could drive any kind of auto or motorcycle. (I hoped he would make me prove this assertion, in which case I promised myself that I wouldn't stop till I got to Munich; but no.)

"Do you mean to say that my friend was not only trying to avoid serving in the American Army but was contemplating treason as well?" I asked.

"Well, that would be it, would it not?" he answered coolly. Then, leaning forward once more, he fired at me: "Why did you write to an official so high?"

At this I laughed outright. "Because the excellent sous-lieutenant who translated when Mr. Lieutenant A. couldn't understand advised us to do so."

Following up this sortie, I addressed the mustache: "Write this down in the testimony--that I, here present, refuse utterly to believe that my friend is not as sincere a lover of France and the French people as any man living!--Tell him to write it," I commanded Noyon stonily. But Noyon shook his head, saying: "We have the very best reason for supposing your friend to be no friend of France." I answered: "That is not my affair. I want my opinion of my friend written in; do you see?" "That's reasonable," the rosette murmured; and the moustache wrote it down.

"Why do you think we volunteered?" I asked sarcastically, when the testimony was complete.

Monsieur le Ministre was evidently rather uncomfortable. He writhed a little in his chair, and tweaked his chin three or four times. The rosette and the moustache were exchanging animated phrases. At last Noyon, motioning for silence and speaking in an almost desperate tone, demanded:

"Est-ce-que vous détestez les boches?"

I had won my own case. The question was purely perfunctory. To walk out of the room a free man I had merely to say yes. My examiners were sure of my answer. The rosette was leaning forward and smiling encouragingly. The moustache was making little ouis in the air with his pen. And Noyon had given up all hope of making me out a criminal. I might be rash, but I was innocent; the dupe of a superior and malign intelligence. I would probably be admonished to choose my friends more carefully next time and that would be all....

Deliberately, I framed the answer:

"Non. J'aime beaucoup les français."

Agile as a weasel, Monsieur le Ministre was on top of me: "It is impossible to love Frenchmen and not to hate Germans."

I did not mind his triumph in the least. The discomfiture of the rosette merely amused me. The surprise of the moustache I found very pleasant.

Poor rosette! He kept murmuring desperately: "Fond of his friend, quite right. Mistaken of course, too bad, meant well."

With a supremely disagreeable expression on his immaculate face the victorious minister of security pressed his victim with regained assurance: "But you are doubtless aware of the atrocities committed by the boches?"

"I have read about them," I replied very cheerfully.

"You do not believe?"

"Ça ce peut."

"And if they are so, which of course they are" (tone of profound conviction) "you do not detest the Germans?"

"Oh, in that case, of course anyone must detest them," I averred with perfect politeness.

And my case was lost, forever lost. I breathed freely once more. All my nervousness was gone. The attempt of the three gentlemen sitting before me to endow my friend and myself with different fates had irrevocably failed.

At the conclusion of a short conference I was told by Monsieur:

"I am sorry for you, but due to your friend you will be detained a little while."

I asked: "Several weeks?"

"Possibly," said Monsieur.

This concluded the trial.

Monsieur le Ministre conducted me into room number 1 again. "Since I have taken your cigarettes and shall keep them for you, I will give you some tobacco. Do you prefer English or French?"

Because the French (paquet bleu) are stronger and because he expected me to say English, I said "French."

With a sorrowful expression Noyon went to a sort of bookcase and took down a blue packet. I think I asked for matches, or else he had given back the few which he found on my person.

Noyon, t-d and the grand criminal (alias I) now descended solemnly to the F.I.A.T. The more and more mystified conducteur conveyed us a short distance to what was obviously a prison-yard. Monsieur le Ministre watched me descend my voluminous baggage.

This was carefully examined by Monsieur at the bureau, of the prison. Monsieur made me turn everything topsy-turvy and inside out. Monsieur expressed great surprise at a huge shell: where did I get it?--I said a French soldier gave it to me as a souvenir.--And several têtes d'obus?--also souvenirs, I assured him merrily. Did Monsieur suppose I was caught in the act of blowing up the French Government, or what exactly?--But here are a dozen sketch-books, what is in them?--Oh, Monsieur, you flatter me: drawings.--Of fortifications? Hardly; of poilus, children, and other ruins.--Ummmm. (Monsieur examined the drawings and found that I had spoken the truth.) Monsieur puts all these trifles into a small bag, with which I had been furnished (in addition to the huge duffle-bag) by the generous Red Cross. Labels them (in French): "Articles found in the baggage of Cummings and deemed inutile to the case at hand." This leaves in the duffle-bag aforesaid: my fur coat, which I brought from New York; my bed and blankets and bed-roll, my civilian clothes, and about twenty-five pounds of soiled linen. "You may take the bed-roll and the folding bed into your cell"--the rest of my affaires would remain in safe keeping at the bureau.

"Come with me," grimly croaked a lank turnkey creature.

Bed-roll and bed in hand, I came along.

We had but a short distance to go; several steps in fact. I remember we turned a corner and somehow got sight of a sort of square near the prison. A military band was executing itself to the stolid delight of some handfuls of ragged civiles. My new captor paused a moment; perhaps his patriotic soul was stirred. Then we traversed an alley with locked doors on both sides, and stopped in front of the last door on the right. A key opened it. The music could still be distinctly heard.

The opened door showed a room, about sixteen feet short and four feet narrow, with a heap of straw in the further end. My spirits had been steadily recovering from the banality of their examination; and it was with a genuine and never-to-be-forgotten thrill that I remarked, as I crossed what might have been the threshold: "Mais, on est bien ici."

A hideous crash nipped the last word. I had supposed the whole prison to have been utterly destroyed by earthquake, but it was only my door closing....

II

EN ROUTE

I put the bed-roll down. I stood up.

I was myself.

An uncontrollable joy gutted me after three months of humiliation, of being bossed and herded and bullied and insulted. I was myself and my own master.

In this delirium of relief (hardly noticing what I did) I inspected the pile of straw, decided against it, set up my bed, disposed the roll on it, and began to examine my cell.

I have mentioned the length and breadth. The cell was ridiculously high; perhaps ten feet. The end with the door in it was peculiar. The door was not placed in the middle of this end, but at one side, allowing for a huge iron can waist-high which stood in the other corner. Over the door and across the end, a grating extended. A slit of sky was always visible.

Whistling joyously to myself, I took three steps which brought me to the door-end. The door was massively made, all of iron or steel I should think. It delighted me. The can excited my curiosity. I looked over the edge of it. At the bottom reposefully lay a new human turd.

I have a sneaking mania for wood-cuts, particularly when used to illustrate the indispensable psychological crisis of some outworn romance. There is in my possession at this minute a masterful depiction of a tall, bearded, horrified man who, clad in an anonymous rig of goat skins, with a fantastic umbrella clasped weakly in one huge paw, bends to examine an indication of humanity in the somewhat cubist wilderness whereof he had fancied himself the owner....

It was then that I noticed the walls. Arm-high they were covered with designs, mottos, pictures. The drawing had all been done in pencil. I resolved to ask for a pencil at the first opportunity.

There had been Germans and Frenchmen imprisoned in this cell. On the right wall, near the door-end, was a long selection from Goethe, laboriously copied. Near the other end of this wall a satiric landscape took place. The technique of this landscape frightened me. There were houses, men, children. And there were trees. I began to wonder what a tree looks like, and laughed copiously.

The back wall had a large and exquisite portrait of a German officer.

The left wall was adorned with a yacht, flying a number 13. "My beloved boat" was inscribed in German underneath. Then came a bust of a German soldier, very idealized, full of unfear. After this, a masterful crudity--a doughnut-bodied rider, sliding with fearful rapidity down the acute backbone of a totally transparent sausage-shaped horse, who was moving simultaneously in five directions. The rider had a bored expression as he supported the stiff reins in one fist. His further leg assisted in his flight. He wore a German soldier's cap and was smoking. I made up my mind to copy the horse and rider at once, so soon, that is, as I should have obtained a pencil.

Last, I found a drawing surrounded by a scrolled motto. The drawing was a potted plant with four blossoms. The four blossoms were elaborately dead. Their death was drawn with a fearful care. An obscure deliberation was exposed in the depiction of their drooping petals. The pot tottered very crookedly on a sort of table, as near as I could see. All around ran a funereal scroll. I read: "My farewell to my beloved wife, Gaby." A fierce hand, totally distinct from the former, wrote in proud letters above: "Punished for desertion. Six years of prison--military degradation."

It must have been five o'clock. Steps. A vast cluttering of the exterior of the door--by whom? Whang opens the door. Turnkey-creature extending a piece of chocolate with extreme and surly caution. I say "Merci" and seize chocolate. Klang shuts the door.

I am lying on my back, the twilight does mistily bluish miracles through the slit over the whang-klang. I can just see leaves, meaning tree.

Then from the left and way off, faintly, broke a smooth whistle, cool like a peeled willow-branch, and I found myself listening to an air from Petroushka, Petroushka, which we saw in Paris at the Châtelet, mon ami et moi....

The voice stopped in the middle--and I finished the air. This code continued for a half-hour.

It was dark.

I had laid a piece of my piece of chocolate on the window-sill. As I lay on my back a little silhouette came along the sill and ate that piece of a piece, taking something like four minutes to do so. He then looked at me, I then smiled at him, and we parted, each happier than before.

My cellule was cool, and I fell asleep easily.

(Thinking of Paris.)

... Awakened by a conversation whose vibrations I clearly felt through the left wall:

Turnkey-creature: "What?"

A moldly moldering molish voice, suggesting putrifying tracts and orifices, answers with a cob-webbish patience so far beyond despair as to be indescribable: "La soupe."

"Well, the soup, I just gave it to you, Monsieur Savy."

"Must have a little something else. My money is chez le directeur. Please take my money which is chez le directeur and give me anything else."

"All right, the next time I come to see you to-day I'll bring you a salad, a nice salad, Monsieur."

"Thank you, Monsieur," the voice moldered.

Klang!!--and says the turnkey-creature to somebody else; while turning the lock of Monsieur Savy's door; taking pains to raise his voice so that Monsieur Savy will not miss a single word through the slit over Monsieur Savy's whang-klang:

"That old fool! Always asks for things. When supposest thou will he realize that he's never going to get anything?"

Grubbing at my door. Whang!

The faces stood in the doorway, looking me down. The expression of the faces identically turnkeyish, i.e., stupidly gloating, ponderously and imperturbably tickled. Look who's here, who let that in?

The right body collapsed sufficiently to deposit a bowl just inside.

I smiled and said: "Good morning, sirs. The can stinks."

They did not smile and said: "Naturally." I smiled and said: "Please give me a pencil. I want to pass the time." They did not smile and said: "Directly."

I smiled and said: "I want some water, if you please."

They shut the door, saying "Later."

Klang and footsteps.

I contemplate the bowl which contemplates me. A glaze of greenish grease seals the mystery of its content, I induce two fingers to penetrate the seal. They bring me up a flat sliver of cabbage and a large, hard, thoughtful, solemn, uncooked bean. To pour the water off (it is warmish and sticky) without committing a nuisance is to lift the cover off Ça Pue. I did.

Thus leaving beans and cabbage-slivers. Which I ate hurryingly, fearing a ventral misgiving.

I pass a lot of time cursing myself about the pencil, looking at my walls, my unique interior.

Suddenly I realize the indisputable grip of nature's humorous hand. One evidently stands on Ça Pue in such cases. Having finished, panting with stink, I tumble on the bed and consider my next move.

The straw will do. Ouch, but it's Dirty.--Several hours elapse....

Steps and fumble. Klang. Repetition of promise to Monsieur Savy, etc.

Turnkeyish and turnkeyish. Identical expression. One body collapses sufficiently to deposit a hunk of bread and a piece of water.

"Give your bowl."

I gave it, smiled and said: "Well, how about that pencil?"

"Pencil?" T-c looked at T-c.

They recited then the following word: "To-morrow." Klang and footsteps.

So I took matches, burnt, and with just 60 of them wrote the first stanza of a ballade. To-morrow I will write the second. Day after to-morrow the third. Next day the refrain. After--oh, well.

My whistling of Petroushka brought no response this evening.

So I climbed on Ça Pue, whom I now regarded with complete friendliness; the new moon was unclosing sticky wings in dusk, a far noise from near things.

I sang a song the "dirty Frenchmen" taught us, mon ami et moi. The song says Bon soir, Madame de la Lune.... I did not sing out loud, simply because the moon was like a mademoiselle, and I did not want to offend the moon. My friends: the silhouette and la lune, not counting Ça Pue, whom I regarded almost as a part of me.

Then I lay down, and heard (but could not see the silhouette eat something or somebody) ... and saw, but could not hear, the incense of Ça Pue mount gingerly upon the taking air of twilight.

The next day.--Promise to M. Savy. Whang. "My pencil?"--"You don't need any pencil, you're going away."--"When?"--"Directly."--"How directly?"--"In an hour or two: your friend has already gone before. Get ready."

Klang and steps.

Everyone very sore about me. I should worry, however.

One hour, I guess.

Steps. Sudden throwing of door open. Pause.

"Come out, American."

As I came out, toting bed and bed-roll, I remarked: "I'm sorry to leave you," which made T-c furiously to masticate his insignificant moustache.

Escorted to bureau, where I am turned over to a very fat gendarme.

"This is the American." The v-f-g eyed me, and I read my sins in his porklike orbs. "Hurry, we have to walk," he ventured sullenly and commandingly.

Himself stooped puffingly to pick up the segregated sack. And I placed my bed, bed-roll, blankets and ample pélisse under one arm, my 150-odd pound duffle-bag under the other; then I paused. Then I said, "Where's my cane?"

The v-f-g hereat had a sort of fit, which perfectly became him.

I repeated gently: "When I came to the bureau I had a cane."

"I don't give a damn about your cane," burbled my new captor frothily, his pink evil eyes swelling with wrath.

"I'm staying," I replied calmly, and sat down on a curb, in the midst of my ponderous trinkets.

A crowd of gendarmes gathered. One didn't take a cane with one to prison (I was glad to know where I was bound, and thanked this communicative gentleman); or criminals weren't allowed canes; or where exactly did I think I was, in the Tuileries? asks a rube movie-cop personage.

"Very well, gentlemen," I said. "You will allow me to tell you something." (I was beet-colored.) "In America that sort of thing isn't done."

This haughty inaccuracy produced an astonishing effect, namely, the prestidigitatorial vanishment of the v-f-g. The v-f-g's numerous confrères looked scared and twirled their whiskers.

I sat on the curb and began to fill a paper with something which I found in my pockets, certainly not tobacco.

Splutter-splutter-fizz-Poop--the v-f-g is back, with my oak-branch in his raised hand, slithering opprobria and mostly crying: "Is that huge piece of wood what you call a cane? It is, is it? What? How? What the--," so on.

I beamed upon him and thanked him, and explained that a "dirty Frenchman" had given it to me as a souvenir, and that I would now proceed.

Twisting the handle in the loop of my sack, and hoisting the vast parcel under my arm, I essayed twice to boost it on my back. This to the accompaniment of HurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurry.... The third time I sweated and staggered to my feet, completely accoutred.

Down the road. Into the ville. Curious looks from a few pedestrians. A driver stops his wagon to watch the spider and his outlandish fly. I chuckled to think how long since I had washed and shaved. Then I nearly fell, staggered on a few steps, and set down the two loads.

Perhaps it was the fault of a strictly vegetarian diet. At any rate, I couldn't move a step farther with my bundles. The sun sent the sweat along my nose in tickling waves. My eyes were blind.

Hereupon I suggested that the v-f-g carry part of one of my bundles with me, and received the answer: "I am doing too much for you as it is. No gendarme is supposed to carry a prisoner's baggage."

I said then: "I'm too tired."

He responded: "You can leave here anything you don't care to carry further; I'll take care of it."

I looked at the gendarme. I looked several blocks through him. My lip did something like a sneer. My hands did something like fists.

At this crisis along comes a little boy. May God bless all males between seven and ten years of age in France!

The gendarme offered a suggestion, in these words: "Have you any change about you?" He knew, of course, that the sanitary official's first act had been to deprive me of every last cent. The gendarme's eyes were fine. They reminded me of ... never mind. "If you have change," said he, "you might hire this kid to carry some of your baggage." Then he lit a pipe which was made in his own image, and smiled fattily.

But herein the v-f-g had bust his milk-jug. There is a slit of a pocket made in the uniform of his criminal on the right side, and completely covered by the belt which his criminal always wears. His criminal had thus outwitted the gumshoe fraternity.

The gosse could scarcely balance my smaller parcel, but managed after three rests to get it to the station platform; here I tipped him something like two cents (all I had) which, with dollar-big eyes, he took and ran.

A strongly-built, groomed apache smelling of cologne and onions greeted my v-f-g with that affection which is peculiar to gendarmes. On me he stared cynically, then sneered frankly.

With a little tooty shriek the funny train tottered in. My captors had taken pains to place themselves at the wrong end of the platform. Now they encouraged me to HurryHurryHurry.

I managed to get under the load and tottered the length of the train to a car especially reserved. There was one other criminal, a beautifully-smiling, shortish man, with a very fine blanket wrapped in a water-proof oilskin cover. We grinned at each other (the most cordial salutation, by the way, that I have ever exchanged with a human being) and sat down opposite one another--he, plus my baggage which he helped me lift in, occupying one seat; the gendarme-sandwich, of which I formed the pièce de résistance, the other.

The engine got under way after several feints; which pleased the Germans so that they sent several scout planes right over the station, train, us et tout. All the French anticraft guns went off together for the sake of sympathy; the guardians of the peace squinted cautiously from their respective windows, and then began a debate on the number of the enemy while their prisoners smiled at each other appreciatively.

"Il fait chaud," said this divine man, prisoner, criminal, or what not, as he offered me a glass of wine in the form of a huge tin cup overflowed from the canteen in his slightly unsteady and delicately made hand. He is a Belgian. Volunteered at beginning of war. Permission at Paris, overstayed by one day. When he reported to his officer, the latter announced that he was a deserter--I said to him, "It is funny. It is funny I should have come back, of my own free will, to my company. I should have thought that being a deserter I would have preferred to remain in Paris." The wine was terribly cold, and I thanked my divine host.

Never have I tasted such wine.

They had given me a chunk of war-bread in place of blessing when I left Noyon. I bit into it with renewed might. But the divine man across from me immediately produced a sausage, half of which he laid simply upon my knee. The halving was done with a large keen poilu's knife.

I have not tasted a sausage since.

The pigs on my either hand had by this time overcome their respective inertias and were chomping cheek-murdering chunks. They had quite a layout, a regular picnic-lunch elaborate enough for kings or even presidents. The v-f-g in particular annoyed me by uttering alternate chompings and belchings. All the time he ate he kept his eyes half-shut; and a mist overspread the sensual meadows of his coarse face.

His two reddish eyes rolled devouringly toward the blanket in its waterproof roll. After a huge gulp of wine he said thickly (for his huge moustache was crusted with saliva-tinted half-moistened shreds of food), "You will have no use for that machine là-bas. They are going to take everything away from you when you get there, you know. I could use it nicely. I have wanted such a piece of rubber for a great while, in order to make me a raincoat. Do you see?" (Gulp. Swallow.)

Here I had an inspiration. I would save the blanket-cover by drawing these brigands' attention to myself. At the same time I would satisfy my inborn taste for the ridiculous. "Have you a pencil?" I said. "Because I am an artist in my own country, and will do your picture."

He gave me a pencil. I don't remember where the paper came from. I posed him in a pig-like position, and the picture made him chew his moustache. The apache thought it very droll. I should do his picture, too, at once. I did my best; though protesting that he was too beautiful for my pencil, which remark he countered by murmuring (as he screwed his moustache another notch), "Never mind, you will try." Oh, yes, I would try all right, all right. He objected, I recall, to the nose.

By this time the divine "deserter" was writhing with joy. "If you please, Monsieur," he whispered radiantly, "it would be too great an honor, but if you could--I should be overcome...."

Tears (for some strange reason) came into my eyes.

He handled his picture sacredly, criticised it with precision and care, finally bestowed it in his inner pocket. Then we drank. It happened that the train stopped and the apache was persuaded to go out and get his prisoner's canteen filled. Then we drank again.

He smiled as he told me he was getting ten years. Three years at solitary confinement was it, and seven working in a gang on the road? That would not be so bad. He wished he was not married, had not a little child. "The bachelors are lucky in this war"--he smiled.

Now the gendarmes began cleaning their beards, brushing their stomachs, spreading their legs, collecting their baggage. The reddish eyes, little and cruel, woke from the trance of digestion and settled with positive ferocity on their prey. "You will have no use...."

Silently the sensitive, gentle hands of the divine prisoner undid the blanket-cover. Silently the long, tired, well-shaped arms passed it across to the brigand at my left side. With a grunt of satisfaction the brigand stuffed it in a large pouch, taking pains that it should not show. Silently the divine eyes said to mine: "What can we do, we criminals?" And we smiled at each other for the last time, the eyes and my eyes.

A station. The apache descends. I follow with my numerous affaires. The divine man follows me--the v-f-g him.

The blanket-roll containing my large fur-coat got more and more unrolled; finally I could not possibly hold it.

It fell. To pick it up I must take the sack off my back.

Then comes a voice, "allow me if you please, monsieur"--and the sack has disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man bowed under my great sack.... I never thanked him. When I turned, they'd taken him away, and the sack stood accusingly at my feet.

Through the complete disorder of my numbed mind flicker jabbings of strange tongues. Some high boy's voice is appealing to me in Belgian, Italian, Polish, Spanish and--beautiful English. "Hey, Jack, give me a cigarette, Jack...."

I lift my eyes. I am standing in a tiny oblong space. A sort of court. All around, two-story wooden barracks. Little crude staircases lead up to doors heavily chained and immensely padlocked. More like ladders than stairs. Curious hewn windows, smaller in proportion than the slits in a doll's house. Are these faces behind the slits? The doors bulge incessantly under the shock of bodies hurled against them from within. The whole dirty nouveau business about to crumble.

Glance one.

Glance two: directly before me. A wall with many bars fixed across one minute opening. At the opening a dozen, fifteen, grins. Upon the bars hands, scraggy and bluishly white. Through the bars stretching of lean arms, incessant stretchings. The grins leap at the window, hands belonging to them catch hold, arms belonging to the hands stretch in my direction ... an instant; the new grins leap from behind and knock off the first grins which go down with a fragile crashing like glass smashed: hands wither and break, arms streak out of sight, sucked inward.

In the huge potpourri of misery a central figure clung, shaken but undislodged. Clung like a monkey to central bars. Clung like an angel to a harp. Calling pleasantly in a high boyish voice: "O Jack, give me a cigarette."

A handsome face, dark, Latin smile, musical fingers strong.

I waded suddenly through a group of gendarmes (they stood around me watching with a disagreeable curiosity my reaction to this). Strode fiercely to the window.

Trillions of hands.

Quadrillions of itching fingers.

The angel-monkey received the package of cigarettes politely, disappearing with it into howling darkness. I heard his high boy's voice distributing cigarettes. Then he leaped into sight, poised gracefully against two central bars, saying "Thank you, Jack, good boy" ... "Thanks, merci, gracias ..." a deafening din of gratitude reeked from within.

"Put your baggage in here," quoth an angry voice. "No, you will not take anything but one blanket in your cell, understand." In French. Evidently the head of the house speaking. I obeyed. A corpulent soldier importantly lead me to my cell. My cell is two doors away from the monkey-angel, on the same side. The high boy-voice, centralized in a torrent-like halo of stretchings, followed my back. The head himself unlocked a lock. I marched coldly in. The fat soldier locked and chained my door. Four feet went away. I felt in my pocket, finding four cigarettes. I am sorry I did not give these also to the monkey--to the angel. Lifted my eyes and saw my own harp.

III

A PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

Through the bars I looked into that little and dirty lane whereby I had entered; in which a sentinel, gun on shoulder, and with a huge revolver strapped at his hip, monotonously moved. On my right was an old wall overwhelmed with moss. A few growths stemmed from its crevices. Their leaves were of a refreshing colour. I felt singularly happy, and carefully throwing myself on the bare planks sang one after another all the French songs which I had picked up in my stay at the ambulance; sang La Madelon, sang AVec avEC DU, and Les Galiots Sont Lourds Dans Sac--concluding with an inspired rendering of La Marseillaise, at which the guard (who had several times stopped his round in what I choose to interpret as astonishment) grounded arms and swore appreciatively. Various officials of the jail passed by me and my lusty songs; I cared no whit. Two or three conferred, pointing in my direction, and I sang a little louder for the benefit of their perplexity. Finally out of voice I stopped.

It was twilight.

As I lay on my back luxuriously, I saw through the bars of my twice padlocked door a boy and a girl about ten years old. I saw them climb on the wall and play together, obliviously and exquisitely, in the darkening air. I watched them for many minutes; till the last moment of light failed; till they and the wall itself dissolved in a common mystery, leaving only the bored silhouette of the soldier moving imperceptibly and wearily against a still more gloomy piece of autumn sky.

At last I knew that I was very thirsty; and leaping up began to clamor at my bars. "Something to drink, please." After a long debate with the sergeant of guards who said very angrily: "Give it to him," a guard took my request and disappeared from view, returning with a more heavily armed guard and a tin cup full of water. One of these gentry watched the water and me, while the other wrestled with the padlock. The door being minutely opened, one guard and the water painfully entered. The other guard remained at the door, gun in readiness. The water was set down, and the enterer assumed a perpendicular position which I thought merited recognition; accordingly I said "Merci" politely, without getting up from the planks. Immediately he began to deliver a sharp lecture on the probability of my using the tin cup to saw my way out; and commended haste in no doubtful terms. I smiled, asked pardon for my inherent stupidity (which speech seemed to anger him) and guzzled the so-called water without looking at it, having learned something from Noyon. With a long and dangerous look at their prisoner, the gentlemen of the guard withdrew, using inconceivable caution in the relocking of the door.

I laughed and fell asleep.

After (as I judged) four minutes of slumber, I was awakened by at least six men standing over me. The darkness was intense, it was extraordinarily cold. I glared at them and tried to understand what new crime I had committed. One of the six was repeating: "Get up, you are going away. Four o'clock." After several attempts I got up. They formed a circle around me; and together we marched a few steps to a sort of storeroom, where my great sack, small sack, and overcoat were handed to me. A rather agreeably voiced guard then handed me a half-cake of chocolate, saying (but with a tolerable grimness): "You'll need it, believe me." I found my stick, at which "piece of furniture" they amused themselves a little until I showed its use, by catching the ring at the mouth of my sack in the curved end of the stick and swinging the whole business unaided on my back. Two new guards--or rather gendarmes--were now officially put in charge of my person; and the three of us passed down the lane, much to the interest of the sentinel, to whom I bade a vivid and unreturned adieu. I can see him perfectly as he stares stupidly at us, a queer shape in the gloom, before turning on his heel.

Toward the very station whereat some hours since I had disembarked with the Belgian deserter and my former escorts, we moved. I was stiff with cold and only half awake, but peculiarly thrilled. The gendarmes on either side moved grimly, without speaking; or returning monosyllables to my few questions. Yes, we were to take the train. I was going somewhere, then? "B'en sure."--"Where?"--"You will know in time."

After a few minutes we reached the station, which I failed to recognize. The yellow flares of lamps, huge and formless in the night mist, some figures moving to and fro on a little platform, a rustle of conversation: everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully abnormal, deliciously insane. Every figure was wrapped with its individual ghostliness; a number of ghosts each out on his own promenade, yet each for some reason selecting this unearthly patch of the world, this putrescent and uneasy gloom. Even my guards talked in whispers. "Watch him, I'll see about the train." So one went off into the mist. I leaned dizzily against the wall nearest me (having plumped down my baggage) and stared into the darkness at my elbow, filled with talking shadows. I recognized officiers anglais wandering helplessly up and down, supported with their sticks; French lieutenants talking to each other here and there; the extraordinary sense-bereft station master at a distance looking like a cross between a jumping-jack and a goblin; knots of permissionaires cursing wearily or joking hopelessly with one another or stalking back and forth with imprecatory gesticulations. "It's a joke, too, you know, there are no more trains?"--"The conductor is dead. I know his sister."--"Old chap, I am all in."--"Say, we are all lost."--"What time is it?"--"My dear fellow, there is no more time, the French Government forbids it." Suddenly burst out of the loquacious opacity a dozen handfuls of Algeriens, their feet swaggering with fatigue, their eyes burning, apparently by themselves--faceless in the equally black mist. By threes and fives they assaulted the goblin who wailed and shook his withered fist in their faces. There was no train. It had been taken away by the French Government. "How do I know how the poilus can get back to their regiments on time? Of course you'll all of you be deserters, but is it my fault?" (I thought of my friend, the Belgian, at this moment lying in a pen at the prison which I had just quitted by some miracle.) ... One of these fine people from uncivilized, ignorant, unwarlike Algeria was drunk and knew it, as did two of his very fine friends who announced that as there was no train he should have a good sleep at a farmhouse hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to espy through the impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted into the dark, his friends' abrupt steps correcting his own large slovenly procedure out of earshot.... Some of the Black People sat down near me and smoked. Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned with fatigue. Their vast gentle hands lay noisily about their knees.

The departed gendarme returned, with a bump, out of the mist. The train for Paris would arrive de suite. We were just in time, our movement had so far been very creditable. All was well. It was cold, eh?

Then with the ghastly miniature roar of an insane toy the train for Paris came fumbling into the station....

We boarded it, due caution being taken that I should not escape. As a matter of fact I held up the would-be passengers for nearly a minute by my unaided attempts to boost my uncouth baggage aboard. Then my captors and I blundered heavily into a compartment in which an Englishman and two French women were seated. My gendarmes established themselves on either side of the door, a process which woke up the Anglo-Saxon and caused a brief gap in the low talk of the women. Jolt--we were off.

I find myself with a française on my left and an anglais on my right. The latter has already uncomprehendingly subsided into sleep. The former (a woman of about thirty) is talking pleasantly to her friend, whom I face. She must have been very pretty before she put on the black. Her friend is also a veuve. How pleasantly they talk, of la guerre, of Paris, of the bad service; talk in agreeably modulated voices, leaning a little forward to each other, not wishing to disturb the dolt at my right. The train tears slowly on. Both the gendarmes are asleep, one with his hand automatically grasping the handle of the door. Lest I escape. I try all sorts of positions, for I find myself very tired. The best is to put my cane between my legs and rest my chin on it; but even that is uncomfortable, for the Englishman has writhed all over me by this time and is snoring creditably. I look him over; an Etonian, as I guess. Certain well-bred-well-fedness. Except for the position--well, c'est la guerre. The women are speaking softly. "And do you know, my dear, that they had raids again in Paris? My sister wrote me."--"One has excitement always in a great city, my dear."--

Bump, slowing down. BUMP--BUMP.

It is light outside. One sees the world. There is a world still, the gouvernement français has not taken it away, and the air must be beautifully cool. In the compartment it is hot. The gendarmes smell worst. I know how I smell. What polite women.

"Enfin, nous voilà." My guards awoke and yawned pretentiously. Lest I should think they had dozed off. It is Paris.

Some permissionaires cried "Paris." The woman across from me said "Paris, Paris." A great shout came up from every insane drowsy brain that had travelled with us--a fierce and beautiful cry, which went the length of the train.... Paris, where one forgets, Paris, which is Pleasure, Paris, in whom our souls live, Paris, the beautiful, Paris at last.

The Englishman woke up and said heavily to me: "I say, where are we?"--"Paris," I answered, walking carefully on his feet as I made my baggage-laden way out of the compartment. It was Paris.

My guards hurried me through the station. One of them (I saw for the first time) was older than the other, and rather handsome with his Van Dyck blackness of curly beard. He said that it was too early for the metro, it was closed. We should take a car. It would bring us to the other station from which our next train left. We should hurry. We emerged from the station and its crowds of crazy men. We boarded a car marked something. The conductress, a strong, pink-cheeked, rather beautiful girl in black, pulled my baggage in for me with a gesture which filled all of me with joy. I thanked her, and she smiled at me. The car moved along through the morning.

We descended from it. We started off on foot. The car was not the right car. We would have to walk to the station. I was faint and almost dead from weariness and I stopped when my overcoat had fallen from my benumbed arm for the second time: "How far is it?" The older gendarme returned briefly, "Twenty minutes." I said to him: "Will you help me carry these things?" He thought, and told the younger to carry my small sack filled with papers. The latter grunted, "C'est défendu." We went a little farther, and I broke down again. I stopped dead, and said: "I can't go any farther." It was obvious to my escorts that I couldn't, so I didn't trouble to elucidate. Moreover, I was past elucidation.

The older stroked his beard. "Well," he said, "would you care to take a cab?" I merely looked at him. "If you wish to call a cab, I will take out of your money, which I have here and which I must not give to you, the necessary sum, and make a note of it, subtracting from the original amount a sufficiency for our fare to the Gare. In that case we will not walk to the Gare, we will in fact ride." "Please," was all I found to reply to this eloquence.

Several empty cabs had gone by during the peroration of the law, and no more seemed to offer themselves. After some minutes, however, one appeared and was duly hailed. Nervously (he was shy in the big city) the older asked if the driver knew where the Gare was. "Quelle?" demanded the cocher angrily. And when he was told--"Of course, I know, why not?" We got in; I being directed to sit in the middle, and my two bags and fur coat piled on top of us all.

So we drove through the streets in the freshness of the full morning, the streets full of a few divine people who stared at me and nudged one another, the streets of Paris ... the drowsy ways wakening at the horses' hoofs, the people lifting their faces to stare.

We arrived at the Gare, and I recognized it vaguely. Was it D'Orléans? We dismounted, and the tremendous transaction of the fare was apparently very creditably accomplished by the older. The cocher gave me a look and remarked whatever it is Paris drivers remark to Paris cab horses, pulling dully at the reins. We entered the station and I collapsed comfortably on a bench; the younger, seating himself with enormous pomposity at my side, adjusted his tunic with a purely feminine gesture expressive at once of pride and nervousness. Gradually my vision gained in focus. The station has a good many people in it. The number increases momently. A great many are girls. I am in a new world--a world of chic femininity. My eyes devour the inimitable details of costume, the inexpressible nuances of pose, the indescribable démarche of the midinette. They hold themselves differently. They have even a little bold color here and there on skirt or blouse or hat. They are not talking about La Guerre. Incredible. They appear very beautiful, these Parisiennes.

And simultaneously with my appreciation of the crisp persons about me comes the hitherto unacknowledged appreciation of my uncouthness. My chin tells my hand of a good quarter inch of beard, every hair of it stiff with dirt. I can feel the dirt-pools under my eyes. My hands are rough with dirt. My uniform is smeared and creased in a hundred thousand directions. My puttees and shoes are prehistoric in appearance....

My first request was permission to visit the vespasienne. The younger didn't wish to assume any unnecessary responsibilities; I should wait till the older returned. There he was now. I might ask him. The older benignly granted my petition, nodding significantly to his fellow-guard, by whom I was accordingly escorted to my destination and subsequently back to my bench. When we got back the gendarmes held a consultation of terrific importance; in substance, the train which should be leaving at that moment (six something) did not run to-day. We should therefore wait for the next train, which leaves at twelve-something-else. Then the older surveyed me and said almost kindly: "How would you like a cup of coffee?"--"Much," I replied sincerely enough.--"Come with me," he commanded, resuming instantly his official manner. "And you" (to the younger) "watch his baggage."

Of all the very beautiful women whom I had seen the most very beautiful was the large and circular lady who sold a cup of perfectly hot and genuine coffee for two cents, just on the brink of the station, chatting cheerfully with her many customers. Of all the drinks I ever drank, hers was the most sacredly delicious. She wore, I remember, a tight black dress in which enormous and benignant breasts bulged and sank continuously. I lingered over my tiny cup, watching her swift big hands, her round nodding face, her large sudden smile. I drank two coffees, and insisted that my money should pay for our drinks. Of all the treating which I shall ever do, the treating of my captor will stand unique in pleasure. Even he half appreciated the sense of humor involved; though his dignity did not permit a visible acknowledgment thereof.

Madame la vendeuse de café, I shall remember you for more than a little while.

Having thus consummated breakfast, my guardian suggested a walk. Agreed. I felt I had the strength of ten because the coffee was pure. Moreover it would be a novelty to me promener sans l50-odd pounds of baggage. We set out.

As we walked easily and leisurely the by this time well peopled streets of the vicinity, my guard indulged himself in pleasant conversation. Did I know Paris much? He knew it all. But he had not been in Paris for several (eight was it?) years. It was a fine place, a large city to be sure. But always changing. I had spent a month in Paris while waiting for my uniform and my assignment to a section sanitaire? And my friend was with me? H-mmm-mm.

A perfectly typical runt of a Paris bull eyed us. The older saluted him with infinite respect, the respect of a shabby rube deacon for a well-dressed burglar. They exchanged a few well-chosen words, in French of course. "What ya got there?"--"An American."--"What's wrong with him?"--"H-mmm" mysterious shrug of the shoulders followed by a whisper in the ear of the city thug. The latter contented himself with "Ha-aaa"--plus a look at me which was meant to wipe me off the earth's face (I pretended to be studying the morning meanwhile). Then we moved on, followed by ferocious stares from the Paris bull. Evidently I was getting to be more of a criminal every minute; I should probably be shot to-morrow, not (as I had assumed erroneously) the day after. I drank the morning with renewed vigor, thanking heaven for the coffee, Paris; and feeling complete confidence in myself. I should make a great speech (in Midi French). I should say to the firing squad: "Gentlemen, c'est de la blague, tu sais? Moi, je connais la soeur du conducteur." ... They would ask me when I preferred to die. I should reply, "Pardon me, you wish to ask me when I prefer to become immortal?" I should answer: "What matter? It's all the same to me, because there isn't any more time--the French Government forbids it."

My laughter surprised the older considerably. He would have been more astonished had I yielded to the well-nigh irrepressible inclination, which at the moment suffused me, to clap him heartily upon the back.

Everything was blague. The driver, the café, the police, the morning, and least and last the excellent French Government.

We had walked for a half hour or more. My guide and protector now inquired of a workingman the location of the boucheries? "There is one right in front of you," he was told. Sure enough, not a block away. I laughed again. It was eight years all right.

The older bought a great many things in the next five minutes: sausage, cheese, bread, chocolate, pinard rouge. A bourgeoise with an unagreeable face and suspicion of me written in headlines all over her mouth served us with quick hard laconicisms of movement. I hated her and consequently refused my captor's advice to buy a little of everything (on the ground that it would be a long time till the next meal), contenting myself with a cake of chocolate--rather bad chocolate, but nothing to what I was due to eat during the next three months. Then we retraced our steps, arriving at the station after several mistakes and inquiries, to find the younger faithfully keeping guard over my two sacs and overcoat.

The older and I sat down, and the younger took his turn at promenading. I got up to buy a Fantasio at the stand ten steps away, and the older jumped up and escorted me to and from it. I think I asked him what he would read? and he said "Nothing." Maybe I bought him a journal. So we waited, eyed by everyone in the Gare, laughed at by the officers and their marraines, pointed at by sinewy dames and decrepit bonhommes--the centre of amusement for the whole station. In spite of my reading I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Would it never be Twelve? Here comes the younger, neat as a pin, looking fairly sterilized. He sits down on my left. Watches are ostentatiously consulted. It is time. En avant. I sling myself under my bags.

"Where are we going now?" I asked the older. Curling the tips of his mustachios, he replied, "Mah-say."

Marseilles! I was happy once more. I had always wanted to go to that great port of the Mediterranean, where one has new colors and strange customs, and where the people sing when they talk. But how extraordinary to have come to Paris--and what a trip lay before us. I was much muddled about the whole thing. Probably I was to be deported. But why from Marseilles? Where was Marseilles anyway? I was probably all wrong about its location. Who cared, after all? At least we were leaving the pointings and the sneers and the half-suppressed titters....

Two fat and respectable bonhommes, the two gendarmes, and I, made up one compartment. The former talked an animated stream, the guards and I were on the whole silent. I watched the liquidating landscape and dozed happily. The gendarmes dozed, one at each door. The train rushed lazily across the earth, between farmhouses, into fields, along woods ... the sunlight smacked my eye and cuffed my sleepy mind with colour.

I was awakened by a noise of eating. My protectors, knife in hand, were consuming their meat and bread, occasionally tilting their bidons on high and absorbing the thin streams which spurted therefrom. I tried a little chocolate. The bonhommes were already busy with their repast. The older gendarme watched me chewing away at the chocolate, then commanded, "Take some bread." This astonished me, I confessed, beyond anything which had heretofore occurred. I gazed mutely at him, wondering whether the gouvernement français had made away with his wits. He had relaxed amazingly: his cap lay beside him, his tunic was unbuttoned, he slouched in a completely undisciplined posture--his face seemed to have been changed for a peasant's, it was almost open in expression and almost completely at ease. I seized the offered hunk, and chewed vigorously on it. Bread was bread. The older appeared pleased with my appetite; his face softened still more, as he remarked: "Bread without wine doesn't taste good," and proffered his bidon. I drank as much as I dared, and thanked him: "Ca va mieux." The pinard went straight to my brain, I felt my mind cuddled by a pleasant warmth, my thoughts became invested with a great contentment. The train stopped; and the younger sprang out, carrying the empty canteens of himself and his comrade. When they and he returned, I enjoyed another cup. From that moment till we reached our destination at about eight o'clock the older and I got on extraordinarily well. When the gentlemen descended at their station he waxed almost familiar. I was in excellent spirits; rather drunk; extremely tired. Now that the two guardians and myself were alone in the compartment, the curiosity which had hitherto been stifled by etiquette and pride of capture came rapidly to light. Why was I here, anyway? I seemed well enough to them.--Because my friend had written some letters, I told them.--But I had done nothing myself?--I explained that we used to be together all the time, mon ami et moi; that was the only reason which I knew of.--It was very funny to see how this explanation improved matters. The older in particular was immensely relieved.--I would without doubt, he said, be set free immediately upon my arrival. The French government didn't keep people like me in prison.--They fired some questions about America at me, to which I imaginatively replied. I think I told the younger that the average height of buildings in America was nine hundred metres. He stared and shook his head doubtfully, but I convinced him in the end. Then in my turn I asked questions, the first being: Where was my friend?--It seems that my friend had left Gré (or whatever it was) the morning of the day I had entered it.--Did they know where my friend was going?--They couldn't say. They had been told that he was very dangerous.--So we talked on and on: How long had I studied French? I spoke very well. Was it hard to learn English?--

Yet when I climbed out to relieve myself by the roadside one of them was at my heels.

Finally watches were consulted, tunics buttoned, hats donned. I was told in a gruff voice to prepare myself; that we were approaching the end of our journey. Looking at the erstwhile participants in conversation, I scarcely knew them. They had put on with their caps a positive ferocity of bearing. I began to think that I had dreamed the incidents of the preceding hours.

We descended at a minute, dirty station which possessed the air of having been dropped by mistake from the bung of the gouvernement français. The older sought out the station master, who having nothing to do was taking a siesta in a miniature waiting-room. The general countenance of the place was exceedingly depressing; but I attempted to keep up my spirits with the reflection that after all all this was but a junction, and that from here we were to take a train for Marseilles herself. The name of the station, Briouse, I found somewhat dreary. And now the older returned with the news that our train wasn't running today, and that the next train didn't arrive till early morning and should we walk to Marseilles? I could check my great sac and overcoat. The small sac I should carry along--it was only a step, after all.

With a glance at the desolation of Briouse I agreed to the stroll. It was a fine night for a little promenade; not too cool, and with a promise of a moon stuck into the sky. The sac and coat were accordingly checked by the older; the station master glanced at me and haughtily grunted (having learned that I was an American); and my protectors and I set out.

I insisted that we stop at the first café and have some wine on me. To this my escorts agreed, making me go ten paces ahead of them, and waiting until I was through before stepping up to the bar--not from politeness, to be sure, but because (as I soon gathered) gendarmes were not any too popular in this part of the world, and the sight of two gendarmes with a prisoner might inspire the habitués to attempt a rescue. Furthermore, on leaving the café (a desolate place if I ever saw one, with a fearful patronne) I was instructed sharply to keep close to them but on no account to place myself between them, there being sundry villagers to be encountered before we struck the highroad for Marseilles. Thanks to their forethought and my obedience the rescue did not take place, nor did our party excite even the curiosity of the scarce and soggy inhabitants of the unlovely town of Briouse.

The highroad won, all of us relaxed considerably. The sac full of suspicious letters which I bore on my shoulder was not so light as I had thought, but the kick of the Briouse pinard thrust me forward at a good clip. The road was absolutely deserted; the night hung loosely around it, here and there tattered by attempting moonbeams. I was somewhat sorry to find the way hilly, and in places bad underfoot; yet the unknown adventure lying before me, and the delicious silence of the night (in which our words rattled queerly like tin soldiers in a plush-lined box) boosted me into a condition of mysterious happiness. We talked, the older and I, of strange subjects. As I suspected, he had been not always a gendarme. He had seen service among the Arabs. He had always liked languages and had picked up Arabian with great ease--of this he was very proud. For instance--the Arabian way of saying "Give me to eat" was this; when you wanted wine you said so and so; "Nice day" was something else. He thought I could pick it up inasmuch as I had done so creditably with French. He was absolutely certain that English was much easier to learn than French, and would not be moved. Now what was the American language like? I explained that it was a sort of Argot-English. When I gave him some phrases he was astonished--"It sounds like English!" he cried, and retailed his stock of English phrases for my approval. I tried hard to get his intonation of the Arabian, and he helped me on the difficult sounds. America must be a strange place, he thought....

After two hours walking he called a halt, bidding us rest. We all lay flat on the grass by the roadside. The moon was still battling with clouds. The darkness of the fields on either side was total. I crawled on hands and knees to the sound of silver-trickling water and found a little spring-fed stream. Prone, weight on elbows, I drank heavily of its perfect blackness. It was icy, talkative, minutely alive.

The older presently gave a perfunctory "alors"; we got up; I hoisted my suspicious utterances upon my shoulder, which recognized the renewal of hostilities with a neuralgic throb. I banged forward with bigger and bigger feet. A bird, scared, swooped almost into my face. Occasionally some night-noise pricked a futile, minute hole in the enormous curtain of soggy darkness. Uphill now. Every muscle thoroughly aching, head spinning, I half-straightened my no longer obedient body; and jumped: face to face with a little wooden man hanging all by itself in a grove of low trees.

--The wooden body, clumsy with pain, burst into fragile legs with absurdly large feet and funny writhing toes; its little stiff arms made abrupt cruel equal angles with the road. About its stunted loins clung a ponderous and jocular fragment of drapery. On one terribly brittle shoulder the droll lump of its neckless head ridiculously lived. There was in this complete silent doll a gruesome truth of instinct, a success of uncanny poignancy, an unearthly ferocity of rectangular emotion.

For perhaps a minute the almost obliterated face and mine eyed one another in the silence of intolerable autumn.

Who was this wooden man? Like a sharp black mechanical cry in the spongy organism of gloom stood the coarse and sudden sculpture of his torment; the big mouth of night carefully spurted the angular actual language of his martyred body. I had seen him before in the dream of some mediaeval saint, with a thief sagging at either side, surrounded with crisp angels. Tonight he was alone; save for myself, and the moon's minute flower pushing between slabs of fractured cloud.

I was wrong, the moon and I and he were not alone.... A glance up the road gave me two silhouettes at pause. The gendarmes were waiting. I must hurry to catch up or incur suspicions by my sloth. I hastened forward, with a last look over my shoulder ... the wooden man was watching us.

When I came abreast of them, expecting abuse, I was surprised by the older's saying quietly "We haven't far to go," and plunging forward imperturbably into the night.

Nor had we gone a half hour before several dark squat forms confronted us: houses. I decided that I did not like houses--particularly as now my guardian's manner abruptly changed; once more tunics were buttoned, holsters adjusted, and myself directed to walk between and keep always up with the others. Now the road became thoroughly afflicted with houses, houses not, however, so large and lively as I had expected from my dreams of Marseilles. Indeed we seemed to be entering an extremely small and rather disagreeable town. I ventured to ask what its name was. "Mah-say" was the response. By this I was fairly puzzled. However the street led us to a square, and I saw the towers of a church sitting in the sky; between them the round, yellow, big moon looked immensely and peacefully conscious ... no one was stirring in the little streets, all the houses were keeping the moon's secret.

We walked on.

I was too tired to think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality. What was it? I knew--the moon's picture of a town. These streets with their houses did not exist, they were but a ludicrous projection of the moon's sumptuous personality. This was a city of Pretend, created by the hypnotism of moonlight.--Yet when I examined the moon she too seemed but a painting of a moon and the sky in which she lived a fragile echo of colour. If I blew hard the whole shy mechanism would collapse gently with a neat soundless crash. I must not, or lose all.

We turned a corner, then another. My guides conferred concerning the location of something, I couldn't make out what. Then the older nodded in the direction of a long dull dirty mass not a hundred yards away, which (as near as I could see) served either as a church or a tomb. Toward this we turned. All too soon I made out its entirely dismal exterior. Grey long stone walls, surrounded on the street side by a fence of ample proportions and uniformly dull colour. Now I perceived that we made toward a gate, singularly narrow and forbidding, in the grey long wall. No living soul appeared to inhabit this desolation.

The older rang at the gate. A gendarme with a revolver answered his ring; and presently he was admitted, leaving the younger and myself to wait. And now I began to realize that this was the gendarmerie of the town, into which for safe-keeping I was presently to be inducted for the night. My heart sank, I confess, at the thought of sleeping in the company of that species of humanity which I had come to detest beyond anything in hell or on earth. Meanwhile the doorman had returned with the older, and I was bidden roughly enough to pick up my baggage and march. I followed my guides down a corridor, up a staircase, and into a dark, small room where a candle was burning. Dazzled by the light and dizzied by the fatigue of my ten or twelve mile stroll, I let my baggage go; and leaned against a convenient wall, trying to determine who was now my tormentor.

Facing me at a table stood a man of about my own height, and, as I should judge, about forty years old. His face was seedy sallow and long. He had bushy semi-circular eyebrows which drooped so much as to reduce his eyes to mere blinking slits. His cheeks were so furrowed that they leaned inward. He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large beak of preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the expression of falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the unimportant chin. His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which twitched nervously. His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse, from which hung a croix de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks culminated in bed-slippers. In physique he reminded me a little of Ichabod Crane. His neck was exactly like a hen's: I felt sure that when he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid may run their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah" which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in the background of his consciousness.

"Vous êtes, uh-ah, l'Am-é-ri-cain?"

"Je suis Américain," I admitted.

"Eh-bi-en uh-ah uh-ah--We were expecting you." He surveyed me with great interest.

Behind this seedy and restless personage I noted his absolute likeness, adorning one of the walls. The rooster was faithfully depicted à la Rembrandt at half-length in the stirring guise of a fencer, foil in hand, and wearing enormous gloves. The execution of this masterpiece left something to be desired; but the whole betokened a certain spirit and verve, on the part of the sitter, which I found difficulty in attributing to the being before me.

"Vous êtes uh-ah KEW-MANGZ?"

"What?" I said, completely baffled by this extraordinary dissyllable.

"Comprenez vous fran-çais?"

"Un peu."

"Bon. Alors, vous vous ap-pel-lez KEW MANGZ, m'est-ce pas? Edouard KEW-MANGZ?"

"Oh," I said, relieved, "yes." It was really amazing, the way he writhed around the G.

"Comment ça se prononce en anglais?"

I told him.

He replied benevolently, somewhat troubled "uh-ah uh-ah uh-ah--why are you here, KEW-MANGZ?"

At this question I was for one moment angrier than I had ever before been in all my life. Then I realized the absurdity of the situation, and laughed.--"Sais pas."

The questionnaire continued:

"You were in the Red Cross?"--"Surely, in the Norton Harjes Ambulance, Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un."--"You had a friend there?"--"Naturally."--"Il a écrit, votre ami, des bêtises, n'est ce pas?"--"So they told me. N'en sais rien."--"What sort of person was your friend?"--"He was a magnificent person, always très gentil with me."--(With a queer pucker the fencer remarked) "Your friend got you into a lot of trouble, though."--(To which I replied with a broad grin) "N'importe, we are camarades."

A stream of puzzled uh-ahs followed this reply. The fencer, or rooster or whatever he might be, finally, picking up the lamp and the lock, said: "Alors, viens avec moi, KEW-MANGZ." I started to pick up the sac, but he told me it would be kept in the office (we being in the office). I said I had checked a large sac and my fur overcoat at Briouse, and he assured me they would be sent on by train. He now dismissed the gendarmes, who had been listening curiously to the examination. As I was conducted from the bureau I asked him point-blank: "How long am I to stay here?"--to which he answered "Oh, peutêtre un jour, deux jours, je ne sais pas."

Two days in a gendarmerie would be enough, I thought. We marched out.

Behind me the bedslippered rooster uhahingly shuffled. In front of me clumsily gamboled the huge imitation of myself. It descended the terribly worn stairs. It turned to the right and disappeared....

We were standing in a chapel.

The shrinking light which my guide held had become suddenly minute; it was beating, senseless and futile, with shrill fists upon a thick enormous moisture of gloom. To the left and right through lean oblongs of stained glass burst dirty burglars of moonlight. The clammy stupid distance uttered dimly an uncanny conflict--the mutterless tumbling of brutish shadows. A crowding ooze battled with my lungs. My nostrils fought against the monstrous atmospheric slime which hugged a sweet unpleasant odour. Staring ahead, I gradually disinterred the pale carrion of the darkness--an altar, guarded with the ugliness of unlit candles, on which stood inexorably the efficient implements for eating God.

I was to be confessed, then, of my guilty conscience, before retiring? It boded well for the morrow.

... the measured accents of the fencer: "Prenez votre paillasse." I turned. He was bending over a formless mass in one corner of the room. The mass stretched halfway to the ceiling. It was made of mattress-shapes. I pulled at one--burlap, stuffed with prickly straw. I got it on my shoulder. "Alors." He lighted me to the door-way by which we had entered. (I was somewhat pleased to leave the place.)

Back, down a corridor, up more stairs; and we were confronted by a small scarred pair of doors from which hung two of the largest padlocks I had ever seen. Being unable to go further, I stopped: he produced a huge ring of keys. Fumbled with the locks. No sound of life: the keys rattled in the locks with surprising loudness; the latter, with an evil grace, yielded--the two little miserable doors swung open.

Into the square blackness I staggered with my paillasse. There was no way of judging the size of the dark room which uttered no sound. In front of me was a pillar. "Put it down by that post, and sleep there for tonight, in the morning nous allons voir" directed the fencer. "You won't need a blanket," he added; and the doors clanged, the light and fencer disappeared.

I needed no second invitation to sleep. Fully dressed, I fell on my paillasse with a weariness which I have never felt before or since. But I did not close my eyes: for all about me there rose a sea of most extraordinary sound... the hitherto empty and minute room became suddenly enormous: weird cries, oaths, laughter, pulling it sideways and backward, extending it to inconceivable depth and width, telescoping it to frightful nearness. From all directions, by at least thirty voices in eleven languages (I counted as I lay Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, Turkish, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, French--and English) at distances varying from seventy feet to a few inches, for twenty minutes I was ferociously bombarded. Nor was my perplexity purely aural. About five minutes after lying down, I saw (by a hitherto unnoticed speck of light which burned near the doors which I had entered) two extraordinary looking figures--one a well-set man with a big, black beard, the other a consumptive with a bald head and sickly moustache, both clad only in their knee-length chemises, hairy legs naked, feet bare--wander down the room and urinate profusely in the corner nearest me. This act accomplished, the figures wandered back, greeted with a volley of ejaculatory abuse from the invisible co-occupants of my new sleeping-apartment; and disappeared in darkness.

I remarked to myself that the gendarmes of this gendarmerie were peculiarly up in languages, and fell asleep.

IV

LE NOUVEAU

"Vous ne voulez pas de café?"

The threatening question recited in a hoarse voice woke me like a shot. Sprawled half on and half off my paillasse, I looked suddenly up into a juvenile pimply face with a red tassel bobbing in its eyes. A boy in a Belgian uniform was stooping over me. In one hand a huge pail a third full of liquid slime. I said fiercely: "Au contraire, je veux bien." And collapsed on the mattress.

"Pas de quart, vous?" the face fired at me.

"Comprends pas," I replied, wondering what on earth the words meant.

"English?"

"American."

At this moment a tin cup appeared mysteriously out of the gloom and was rapidly filled from the pail, after which operation the tassel remarked: "Your friend here" and disappeared.

I decided I had gone completely crazy.

The cup had been deposited near me. Not daring to approach it, I boosted my aching corpse on one of its futile elbows and gazed blankly around. My eyes, wading laboriously through a dark atmosphere, a darkness gruesomely tactile, perceived only here and there lively patches of vibrating humanity. My ears recognised English, something which I took to be low-German and which was Belgian, Dutch, Polish, and what I guessed to be Russian.

Trembling with this chaos, my hand sought the cup. The cup was not warm; the contents, which I hastily gulped, were not even tepid. The taste was dull, almost bitter, clinging, thick, nauseating. I felt a renewed interest in living as soon as the deathful swallow descended to my abdomen, very much as a suicide who changes his mind after the fatal dose. I decided that it would be useless to vomit. I sat up. I looked around.

The darkness was rapidly going out of the sluggish stinking air. I was sitting on my mattress at one end of a sort of room, filled with pillars; ecclesiastical in feeling. I already perceived it to be of enormous length. My mattress resembled an island: all around it on the floor at distances varying from a quarter of an inch to ten feet (which constituted the limit of distinct vision) reposed startling identities. There was blood in some of them. Others consisted of a rind of blueish matter sustaining a core of yellowish froth. From behind me a chunk of hurtling spittle joined its fellows. I decided to stand up.

At this moment, at the far end of the room, I seemed to see an extraordinary vulture-like silhouette leap up from nowhere. It rushed a little way in my direction crying hoarsely "Corvée d'eau!"--stopped, bent down at what I perceived to be a paillasse like mine, jerked what was presumably the occupant by the feet, shook him, turned to the next, and so on up to six. As there seemed to be innumerable paillasses, laid side by side at intervals of perhaps a foot with their heads to the wall on three sides of me, I was wondering why the vulture had stopped at six. On each mattress a crude imitation of humanity, wrapped ear-high in its blanket, lay and drank from a cup like mine and spat long and high into the room. The ponderous reek of sleepy bodies undulated toward me from three directions. I had lost sight of the vulture in a kind of insane confusion which arose from the further end of the room. It was as if he had touched off six high explosives. Occasional pauses in the minutely crazy din were accurately punctuated by exploding bowels; to the great amusement of innumerable somebodies, whose precise whereabouts the gloom carefully guarded.

I felt that I was the focus of a group of indistinct recumbents who were talking about me to one another in many incomprehensible tongues. I noticed beside every pillar (including the one beside which I had innocently thrown down my mattress the night before) a good sized pail, overflowing with urine, and surrounded by a large irregular puddle. My mattress was within an inch of the nearest puddle. What I took to be a man, an amazing distance off, got out of bed and succeeded in locating the pail nearest to him after several attempts. Ten invisible recumbents yelled at him in six languages.

All at once a handsome figure rose from the gloom at my elbow. I smiled stupidly into his clear hardish eyes. And he remarked pleasantly:

"Your friend's here, Johnny, and wants to see you."

A bulge of pleasure swooped along my body, chasing aches and numbness, my muscles danced, nerves tingled in perpetual holiday.

B. was lying on his camp-cot, wrapped like an Eskimo in a blanket which hid all but his nose and eyes.

"Hello, Cummings," he said smiling. "There's a man here who is a friend of Vanderbilt and knew Cézanne."

I gazed somewhat critically at B. There was nothing particularly insane about him, unless it was his enthusiastic excitement, which might almost be attributed to my jack-in-the-box manner of arriving. He said: "There are people here who speak English, Russian, Arabian. There are the finest people here! Did you go to Gré? I fought rats all night there. Huge ones. They tried to eat me. And from Gré to Paris? I had three gendarmes all the way to keep me from escaping, and they all fell asleep."

I began to be afraid that I was asleep myself. "Please be frank," I begged. "Strictly entre nous: am I dreaming, or is this a bug-house?"

B. laughed, and said: "I thought so when I arrived two days ago. When I came in sight of the place a lot of girls waved from the window and yelled at me. I no sooner got inside than a queer looking duck whom I took to be a nut came rushing up to me and cried: 'Too late for soup!'--This is Campe de Triage de la Ferté Macé, Orne, France, and all these fine people were arrested as spies. Only two or three of them can speak a word of French, and that's soupe!"

I said, "My God, I thought Marseilles was somewhere on the Mediterranean Ocean, and that this was a gendarmerie."

"But this is M-a-c-é. It's a little mean town, where everybody snickers and sneers at you if they see you're a prisoner. They did at me."

"Do you mean to say we're espions too?"

"Of course!" B. said enthusiastically. "Thank God! And in to stay. Every time I think of the section sanitaire, and A. and his thugs, and the whole rotten red-taped Croix Rouge, I have to laugh. Cummings, I tell you this is the finest place on earth!"

A vision of the Chef de la section Sanitaire Ving-et-Un passed through my mind. The doughy face. Imitation-English-officer swagger. Large calves, squeaking puttees. The daily lecture: "I doughno what's th'matter with you fellers. You look like nice boys. Well-edjucated. But you're so dirty in your habits. You boys are always kickin' because I don't put you on a car together. I'm ashamed to do it, that's why. I doughtwanta give this section a black eye. We gotta show these lousy Frenchmen what Americans are. We gotta show we're superior to 'em. Those bastards doughno what a bath means. And you fellers are always hangin' 'round, talkin' with them dirty frog-eaters that does the cookin' and the dirty work 'round here. How d'you boys expect me to give you a chance? I'd like to put you fellers on a car, I wanta see you boys happy. But I don't dare to, that's why. If you want me to send you out, you gotta shave and look neat, and keep away from them dirty Frenchmen. We Americans are over here to learn them lousy bastards something."

I laughed for sheer joy.

A terrific tumult interrupted my mirth. "Par ici!"--"Get out of the way you damn Polak!"--"M'sieu, M'sieu!"--"Over here!"--"Mais non!"--"Gott-ver-dummer!" I turned in terror to see my paillasse in the clutches of four men who were apparently rending it in as many directions.

One was a clean-shaven youngish man with lively eyes, alert and muscular, whom I identified as the man who had called me "Johnny." He had hold of a corner of the mattress and was pulling against the possessor of the opposite corner: an incoherent personage enveloped in a buffoonery of amazing rags and patches, with a shabby head on which excited wisps of dirty hair stood upright in excitement, and the tall, ludicrous, extraordinary, almost noble figure of a dancing bear. A third corner of the paillasse was rudely grasped by a six-foot combination of yellow hair, red hooligan face, and sky-blue trousers; assisted by the undersized tasseled mucker in Belgian uniform, with a pimply rogue's mug and unlimited impertinence of diction, who had awakened me by demanding if I wanted coffee. Albeit completely dazed by the uncouth vocal fracas, I realised in some manner that these hostile forces were contending, not for the possession of the mattress, but merely for the privilege of presenting the mattress to myself.

Before I could offer any advice on this delicate topic, a childish voice cried emphatically beside my ear: "Put the mattress here! What are you trying to do? There's no use destroy-ing a mat-tress!"--at the same moment the mattress rushed with cobalt strides in my direction, propelled by the successful efforts of the Belgian uniform and the hooligan visage, the clean-shaven man and the incoherent bear still desperately clutching their respective corners; and upon its arrival was seized with surprising strength by the owner of the child's voice--a fluffy little gnome-shaped man with a sensitive face which had suffered much--and indignantly deposited beside B.'s bed in a space mysteriously cleared for its reception. The gnome immediately kneeled upon it and fell to carefully smoothing certain creases caused by the recent conflict, exclaiming slowly syllable by syllable: "Mon Dieu. Now, that's better, you mustn't do things like that." The clean-shaven man regarded him loftily with folded arms, while the tassel and the trousers victoriously inquired if I had a cigarette?--and upon receiving one apiece (also the gnome, and the clean-shaven man, who accepted his with some dignity) sat down without much ado on B.'s bed--which groaned ominously in protest--and hungrily fired questions at me. The bear meanwhile, looking as if nothing had happened, adjusted his ruffled costume with a satisfied air and (calmly gazing into the distance) began with singularly delicate fingers to stuff a stunted and ancient pipe with what appeared to be a mixture of wood and manure.

I was still answering questions, when a gnarled voice suddenly threatened, over our head: "Broom? You. Everybody. Clean. Surveillant says. Not me, no?"--I started, expecting to see a parrot.

It was the silhouette.

A vulture-like figure stood before me, a demoralised broom clenched in one claw or fist: it had lean legs cased in shabby trousers, muscular shoulders covered with a rough shirt open at the neck, knotted arms, and a coarse insane face crammed beneath the visor of a cap. The face consisted of a rapid nose, droopy moustache, ferocious watery small eyes, a pugnacious chin, and sunken cheeks hideously smiling. There was something in the ensemble at once brutal and ridiculous, vigorous and pathetic.

Again I had not time to speak; for the hooligan in azure trousers hurled his butt at the bear's feet, exclaiming: "There's another for you, Polak!"--jumped from the bed, seized the broom, and poured upon the vulture a torrent of Gott-ver-dummers, to which the latter replied copiously and in kind. Then the red face bent within a few inches of my own, and for the first time I saw that it had recently been young--"I say I do your sweep for you" it translated pleasantly. I thanked it; and the vulture, exclaiming: "Good. Good. Not me. Surveillant. Harree does it for everybody. Hee, hee"--rushed off, followed by Harree and the tassel. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the tall, ludicrous, extraordinary, almost proud figure of the bear stoop with quiet dignity, the musical fingers close with a singular delicacy upon the moist indescribable eighth-of-an-inch of tobacco.

I did not know that this was a Delectable Mountain....

The clean-shaven man (who appeared to have been completely won over by his smoke), and the fluffy gnome, who had completed the arrangement of my paillasse, now entered into conversation with myself and B.; the clean-shaven one seating himself in Harree's stead, the gnome declining (on the grounds that the bed was already sufficiently loaded) to occupy the place left vacant by the tassel's exit, and leaning against the drab, sweating, poisonous wall. He managed, however, to call our attention to the shelf at B.'s head which he himself had constructed, and promised me a similar luxury toute de suite. He was a Russian, and had a wife and gosse in Paris. "My name is Monsieur Au-guste, at your service"--and his gentle pale eyes sparkled. The clean-shaven talked distinct and absolutely perfect English. His name was Fritz. He was a Norwegian, a stoker on a ship. "You mustn't mind that feller that wanted you to sweep. He's crazy. They call him John the Baigneur. He used to be the bathman. Now he's Maître de Chambre. They wanted me to take it--I said, 'F---- it, I don't want it.' Let him have it. That's no kind of a job, everyone complaining and on top of you morning till night. 'Let them that wants the job take it' I said. That crazy Dutchman's been here for two years. They told him to get out and he wouldn't, he was too fond of the booze" (I jumped at the slang) "and the girls. They took it away from John and give it to that little Ree-shar feller, that doctor. That was a swell job he had, baigneur, too. All the bloody liquor you can drink and a girl every time you want one. He ain't never had a girl in his life, that Ree-shar feller." His laughter was hard, clear, cynical. "That Pompom, the little Belgian feller was just here, he's a great one for the girls. He and Harree. Always getting cabinot. I got it twice myself since I been here."

All this time the enormous room was filling gradually with dirty light. In the further end six figures were brooming furiously, yelling to each other in the dust like demons. A seventh, Harree, was loping to and fro splashing water from a pail and enveloping everything and everybody in a ponderous and blasphemous fog of Gott-ver-dummers. Along three sides (with the exception, that is, of the nearer end, which boasted the sole door) were laid, with their lengths at right angles to the wall, at intervals of three or four feet, something like forty paillasses. On each, with half a dozen exceptions (where the occupants had not yet finished their coffee or were on duty for the corvée) lay the headless body of a man smothered in its blanket, only the boots showing.

The demons were working towards our end of the room. Harree had got his broom and was assisting. Nearer and nearer they came; converging, they united their separate heaps of filth in a loudly stinking single mound at the door. Brooms were stacked against the wall in the corner. The men strolled back to their mattresses.

Monsieur Auguste, whose French had not been able to keep pace with Fritz's English, saw his chance, and proposed "now that the Room is all clean, let us go take a little walk, the three of us." Fritz understood perfectly, and rose, remarking as he fingered his immaculate chin "Well, I guess I'll take a shave before the bloody planton comes"--and Monsieur Auguste, B., and I started down the room.

It was in shape oblong, about 80 feet by 40, unmistakably ecclesiastical in feeling; two rows of wooden pillars, spaced at intervals of fifteen feet, rose to a vaulted ceiling 25 or 30 feet above the floor. As you stood with your back to the door, and faced down the room, you had in the near right-hand corner (where the brooms stood) six pails of urine. On the right-hand long wall, a little beyond the angle of this corner, a few boards, tacked together in any fashion to make a two-sided screen four feet in height, marked the position of a cabinet d'aisance, composed of a small coverless tin pail identical with the other six, and a board of the usual design which could be placed on the pail or not as desired. The wooden floor in the neighborhood of the booth and pails was of a dark colour, obviously owing to the continual overflow of their contents.

The right-hand long wall contained something like ten large windows, of which the first was commanded by the somewhat primitive cabinet. There were no other windows in the remaining walls; or they had been carefully rendered useless. In spite of this fact, the inhabitants had contrived a couple of peep-holes--one in the door-end and one in the left-hand long wall; the former commanding the gate by which I had entered, the latter a portion of the street by which I had reached the gate. The blocking of all windows on three sides had an obvious significance: les hommes were not supposed to see anything which went on in the world without; les hommes might, however, look their fill on a little washing-shed, on a corner of what seemed to be another wing of the building, and on a bleak lifeless abject landscape of scrubby woods beyond--which constituted the view from the ten windows on the right. The authorities had miscalculated a little in one respect: a merest fraction of the barb-wire pen which began at the corner of the above-mentioned building was visible from these windows, which windows (I was told) were consequently thronged by fighting men at the time of the girl's promenade. A planton, I was also told, made it his business, by keeping les femmes out of this corner of their cour at the point of the bayonet to deprive them of the sight of their admirers. In addition, it was dry bread or cabinot for any of either sex who were caught communicating with each other. Moreover the promenades of the men and the women occurred at roughly speaking the same hour, so that a man or woman who remained upstairs on the chance of getting a smile or a wave from his or her girl or lover lost the promenade thereby....

We had in succession gazed from the windows, crossed the end of the room, and started down the other side, Monsieur Auguste marching between us--when suddenly B. exclaimed in English "Good morning! How are you today?" And I looked across Monsieur Auguste, anticipating another Harree or at least a Fritz. What was my surprise to see a spare majestic figure of manifest refinement, immaculately apparelled in a crisp albeit collarless shirt, carefully mended trousers in which the remains of a crease still lingered, a threadbare but perfectly fitting swallow-tail coat, and newly varnished (if somewhat ancient) shoes. Indeed for the first time since my arrival at La Ferté I was confronted by a perfect type: the apotheosis of injured nobility, the humiliated victim of perfectly unfortunate circumstances, the utterly respectable gentleman who had seen better days. There was about him, moreover, something irretrievably English, nay even pathetically Victorian--it was as if a page of Dickens was shaking my friend's hand. "Count Bragard, I want you to meet my friend Cummings"--he saluted me in modulated and courteous accents of indisputable culture, gracefully extending his pale hand. "I have heard a great deal about you from B., and wanted very much to meet you. It is a pleasure to find a friend of my friend B., someone congenial and intelligent in contrast to these swine"--he indicated the room with a gesture of complete contempt. "I see you were strolling. Let us take a turn." Monsieur Auguste said tactfully, "I'll see you soon, friends," and left us with an affectionate shake of the hand and a sidelong glance of jealousy and mistrust at B.'s respectable friend.

"You're looking pretty well today, Count Bragard," B. said amiably.

"I do well enough," the Count answered. "It is a frightful strain--you of course realise that--for anyone who has been accustomed to the decencies, let alone the luxuries, of life. This filth"--he pronounced the word with indescribable bitterness--"this herding of men like cattle--they treat us no better than pigs here. The fellows drop their dung in the very room where they sleep. What is one to expect of a place like this? Ce n'est pas une existence"--his French was glib and faultless.

"I was telling my friend that you knew Cézanne," said B. "Being an artist he was naturally much interested."

Count Bragard stopped in astonishment, and withdrew his hands slowly from the tails of his coat. "Is it possible!" he exclaimed, in great agitation. "What an astonishing coincidence! I am myself a painter. You perhaps noticed this badge"--he indicated a button attached to his left lapel, and I bent and read the words: On War Service. "I always wear it," he said with a smile of faultless sorrow, and resumed his walk. "They don't know what it means here, but I wear it all the same. I was a special representative for The London Sphere at the front in this war. I did the trenches and all that sort of thing. They paid me well; I got fifteen pounds a week. And why not? I am an R.A. My specialty was horses. I painted the finest horses in England, among them the King's own entry in the last Derby. Do you know London?" We said no. "If you are ever in London, go to the" (I forget the name) "Hotel--one of the best in town. It has a beautiful large bar, exquisitely furnished in the very best taste. Anyone will tell you where to find the ----. It has one of my paintings over the bar: "Straight-jacket" (or some such name) "the Marquis of ----'s horse, who won last time the race was run. I was in America in 1910. You know Cornelius Vanderbilt perhaps? I painted some of his horses. We were the best of friends, Vanderbilt and I. I got handsome prices, you understand, three, five, six thousand pounds. When I left, he gave me this card--I have it here somewhere--" he again stopped, sought in his breastpocket a moment, and produced a visiting card. On one side I read the name "Cornelius Vanderbilt"--on the other, in bold handwriting--"to my very dear friend Count F.A. de Bragard" and a date. "He hated to have me go."

I was walking in a dream.

"Have you your sketch-books and paints with you? What a pity. I am always intending to send to England for mine, but you know--one can't paint in a place like this. It is impossible--all this dirt and these filthy people--it stinks! Ugh!"

I forced myself to say: "How did you happen to come here?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "How indeed, you may well ask! I cannot tell you. It must have been some hideous mistake. As soon as I got here I spoke to the Directeur and to the Surveillant. The Directeur said he knew nothing about it; the Surveillant told me confidentially that it was a mistake on the part of the French government; that I would be out directly. He's not such a bad sort. So I am waiting; every day I expect orders from the English government for my release. The whole thing is preposterous. I wrote to the Embassy and told them so. As soon as I set foot outside this place, I shall sue the French government for ten thousand pounds for the loss of time it has occasioned me. Imagine it--I had contracts with countless members of The Lords--and the war came. Then I was sent to the front by The Sphere--and here I am, every day costing me dear, rotting away in this horrible place. The time I have wasted here has already cost me a fortune."

He paused directly in front of the door and spoke with solemnity: "A man might as well be dead."

Scarcely had the words passed his lips when I almost jumped out of my skin, for directly before us on the other side of the wall arose the very noise which announced to Scrooge the approach of Marley's ghost--a dismal clanking and rattling of chains. Had Marley's transparent figure walked straight through the wall and up to the Dickensian character at my side, I would have been less surprised than I was by what actually happened.

The doors opened with an uncanny bang and in the bang stood a fragile minute queer figure, remotely suggesting an old man. The chief characteristic of the apparition was a certain disagreeable nudity which resulted from its complete lack of all the accepted appurtenances and prerogatives of old age. Its little stooping body, helpless and brittle, bore with extraordinary difficulty a head of absurd largeness, yet which moved on the fleshless neck with a horrible agility. Dull eyes sat in the clean-shaven wrinkles of a face neatly hopeless. At the knees a pair of hands hung, infantile in their smallness. In the loose mouth a tiny cigarette had perched and was solemnly smoking itself.

Suddenly the figure darted at me with a spiderlike entirety.

I felt myself lost.

A voice said mechanically from the vicinity of my feet: "II vous faut prendre la douche"--I stared stupidly. The spectre was poised before me; its averted eyes contemplated the window. "Take your bath," it added as an afterthought, in English--"Come with me." It turned suddenly. It hurried to the doorway. I followed. Its rapid deadly doll-like hands shut and skillfully locked the doors in a twinkling. "Come," its voice said.

It hurried before me down two dirty flights of narrow mutilated stairs. It turned left, and passed through an open door.

I found myself in the wet sunless air of morning.

To the right it hurried, following the wall of the building. I pursued it mechanically. At the corner, which I had seen from the window upstairs, the barbed-wire fence eight feet in height began. The thing paused, produced a key and unlocked a gate. The first three or four feet of wire swung inward. He entered. I after him.

In a flash the gate was locked behind me, and I was following along a wall at right angles to the first. I strode after the thing. A moment before I had been walking in a free world: now I was again a prisoner. The sky was still over me, the clammy morning caressed me; but walls of wire and stone told me that my instant of freedom had departed. I was in fact traversing a lane no wider than the gate; on my left, barbed-wire separated me from the famous cour in which les femmes se promenent--a rectangle about 50 feet deep and 200 long, with a stone wall at the further end of it and otherwise surrounded by wire;--on my right, grey sameness of stone, the ennui of the regular and the perpendicular, the ponderous ferocity of silence....

I had taken automatically some six or eight steps in pursuit of the fleeing spectre when, right over my head, the grey stone curdled with a female darkness; the hard and the angular softening in a putrescent explosion of thick wriggling laughter. I started, looked up, and encountered a window stuffed with four savage fragments of crowding Face: four livid, shaggy disks focussing hungrily; four pair of uncouth eyes rapidly smouldering; eight lips shaking in a toothless and viscous titter. Suddenly above and behind these terrors rose a single horror of beauty--a crisp vital head, a young ivory, actual face, a night of firm, alive, icy hair, a white, large, frightful smile.

... The thing was crying two or three paces in front of me: "Come!" The heads had vanished as by magic.

I dived forward; followed through a little door in the wall into a room about fifteen feet square, occupied by a small stove, a pile of wood, and a ladder. He plunged through another even smaller door, into a bleak rectangular place, where I was confronted on the left by a large tin bath and on the right by ten wooden tubs, each about a yard in diameter, set in a row against the wall. "Undress" commanded the spectre. I did so. "Go into the first one." I climbed into the tub. "You shall pull the string," the spectre said, hurriedly throwing his cigarette into a corner. I stared upward, and discovered a string dangling from a kind of reservoir over my head: I pulled: and was saluted by a stabbing crash of icy water. I leaped from the tub. "Here is your napkin. Make dry yourself"--he handed me a piece of cloth a little bigger than a handkerchief. "Hurree." I donned my clothes, wet and shivering and altogether miserable. "Good. Come now!" I followed him, through the room with the stove, into the barbed-wire lane. A hoarse shout rose from the yard--which was filled with women, girls, children, and a baby or two. I thought I recognised one of the four terrors who had saluted me from the window, in a girl of 18 with a soiled slobby body huddling beneath its dingy dress; her bony shoulders stifled in a shawl upon which excremental hair limply spouted; a huge empty mouth; and a red nose, sticking between the bluish cheeks that shook with spasms of coughing. Just inside the wire a figure reminiscent of Gré, gun on shoulder, revolver on hip, moved monotonously.

The apparition hurried me through the gate, and along the wall into the building, where instead of mounting the stairs he pointed down a long, gloomy corridor with a square of light at the end of it, saying rapidly, "Go to the promenade"--and vanished.

With the laughter of the Five still ringing in my ears, and no very clear conception of the meaning of existence, I stumbled down the corridor; bumping squarely into a beefy figure with a bull's neck and the familiar revolver who demanded furiously: "What are you doing there? Nom de Dieu!"--"Pardon. Les douches," I answered, quelled by the collision.--He demanded in wrathy French "Who took you to the douches?"--For a moment I was at a complete loss--then Fritz's remark about the new baigneur flashed through my mind: "Ree-shar" I answered calmly.--The bull snorted satisfactorily. "Get into the cour and hurry up about it" he ordered.--"C'est par là?" I inquired politely.--He stared at me contemptuously without answering; so I took it upon myself to use the nearest door, hoping that he would have the decency not to shoot me. I had no sooner crossed the threshold when I found myself once more in the welcome air; and not ten paces away I espied B. peacefully lounging, with some thirty others, within a cour about one quarter the size of the women's. I marched up to a little dingy gate in the barbed-wire fence, and was hunting for the latch (as no padlock was in evidence) when a scared voice cried loudly "Qu'est ce que vous faites là!" and I found myself stupidly looking into a rifle. B., Fritz, Harree, Pompom, Monsieur Auguste, The Bear, and the last but not least Count de Bragard immediately informed the trembling planton that I was a Nouveau who had just returned from the douches to which I had been escorted by Monsieur Reeshar, and that I should be admitted to the cour by all means. The cautious watcher of the skies was not, however, to be fooled by any such fol-de-rol and stood his ground. Fortunately at this point the beefy planton yelled from the doorway "Let him in," and I was accordingly let in, to the gratification of my friends, and against the better judgment of the guardian of the cour, who muttered something about having more than enough to do already.

I had not been mistaken as to the size of the men's yard: it was certainly not more than twenty yards deep and fifteen wide. By the distinctness with which the shouts of les femmes reached my ears I perceived that the two cours adjoined. They were separated by a stone wall ten feet in height, which I had already remarked (while en route to les douches) as forming one end of the cour des femmes. The men's cour had another stone wall slightly higher than the first, and which ran parallel to it; the two remaining sides, which were property ends, were made by the familiar barbed-wire.

The furniture of the cour was simple: in the middle of the further end, a wooden sentry-box was placed just inside the wire; a curious contrivance, which I discovered to be a sister to the booth upstairs, graced the wall on the left which separated the two cours, while further up on this wall a horizontal iron bar projected from the stone at a height of seven feet and was supported at its other end by a wooden post, the idea apparently being to give the prisoners a little taste of gymnastics; a minute wooden shed filled the right upper corner and served secondarily as a very partial shelter for the men and primarily as a stable for an extraordinary water-wagon, composed of a wooden barrel on two wheels with shafts which would not possibly accommodate anything larger than a diminutive donkey (but in which I myself was to walk not infrequently, as it proved); parallel to the second stone wall, but at a safe distance from it, stretched a couple of iron girders serving as a barbarously cold seat for any unfortunate who could not remain on his feet the entire time; on the ground close by the shed lay amusement devices numbers two and three--a huge iron cannon-ball and the six-foot iron axle of a departed wagon--for testing the strength of the prisoners and beguiling any time which might lie heavily on their hands after they had regaled themselves with the horizontal bar; and finally, a dozen mangy apple-trees, fighting for their very lives in the angry soil, proclaimed to all the world that the cour itself was in reality a verger.

"Les pommiers sont pleins de pommes; Allons au verger, Simone...."

A description of the cour would be incomplete without an enumeration of the manifold duties of the planton in charge, which were as follows: to prevent the men from using the horizontal bar, except for chinning, since if you swung yourself upon it you could look over the wall into the women's cour; to see that no one threw anything over the wall into said cour; to dodge the cannon-ball which had a mysterious habit of taking advantage of the slope of the ground and bounding along at a prodigious rate of speed straight for the sentry-box; to watch closely anyone who inhabited the cabinet d'aisance, lest he should make use of it to vault over the wall; to see that no one stood on the girders, for a similar reason; to keep watch over anyone who entered the shed; to see that everyone urinated properly against the wall in the general vicinity of the cabinet; to protect the apple-trees into which well-aimed pieces of wood and stone were continually flying and dislodging the sacred fruit; to mind that no one entered or exited by the gate in the upper fence without authority; to report any signs, words, tokens, or other immoralities exchanged by prisoners with girls sitting in the windows of the women's wing (it was from one of these windows that I had recently received my salutation), also names of said girls, it being forbidden to exhibit any part of the female person at a window while the males were on promenade; to quell all fights and especially to prevent people from using the wagon axle as a weapon of defense or offense; and last, to keep an eye on the sweeper when he and his wheelbarrow made use of a secondary gate situated in the fence at the further end, not far from the sentry-box, to dump themselves.

Having acquainted me with the various défendus which limited the activities of a man on promenade, my friends proceeded to enliven the otherwise somewhat tedious morning by shattering one after another all rules and regulations. Fritz, having chinned himself fifteen times, suddenly appeared astride of the bar, evoking a reprimand; Pompom bowled the planton with the cannon-ball, apologising in profuse and vile French; Harree the Hollander tossed the wagon-axle lightly half the length of the cour, missing The Bear by an inch; The Bear bided his time and cleverly hurled a large stick into one of the holy trees, bringing to the ground a withered apple for which at least twenty people fought for several minutes; and so on. The most open gestures were indulged in for the benefit of several girls who had braved the official wrath and were enjoying the morning at their windows. The girders were used as a race-track. The beams supporting the shed-roof were shinned. The water-wagon was dislocated from its proper position. The cabinet and urinal were misused. The gate was continually admitting and emitting persons who said they were thirsty, and must get a drink at a tub of water which stood around the corner. A letter was surreptitiously thrown over the wall into the cour des femmes.

The planton who suffered all these indignities was a solemn youth with wise eyes situated very far apart in a mealy expressionless elipse of face, to the lower end of which clung a piece of down, exactly like a feather sticking to an egg. The rest of him was fairly normal with the exception of his hands, which were not mates; the left being considerably larger, and made of wood.

I was at first somewhat startled by this eccentricity; but soon learned that with the exception of two or three, who formed the Surveillant's permanent staff and of whom the beefy one was a shining example, all the plantons were supposed to be unhealthy; they were indeed the disabled whom le gouvernement français sent from time to time to La Ferté and similar institutions for a little outing, and as soon as they had recovered their health under these salubrious influences they were shipped back to do their bit for world-safety, democracy, freedom, etc., in the trenches. I also learned that, of all the ways of attaining cabinot, by far the simplest was to apply to a planton, particularly to a permanent planton, say the beefy one (who was reputed to be peculiarly touchy on this point) the term embusqué. This method never failed. To its efficacy many of the men and more of the girls (by whom the plantons, owing to their habit of taking advantage of the weaker sex at every opportunity, were even more despised) attested by not infrequent spasms of consumptive coughing, which could be plainly heard from the further end of one cour to the other.

In a little over two hours I learned an astonishing lot about La Ferté itself: it was a co-educational receiving station whither were sent from various parts of France (a) males suspected of espionage and (b) females of a well-known type found in the zone of the armies. It was pointed out to me that the task of finding such members of the human race was pas difficile: in the case of the men, any foreigner would do provided his country was neutral (e.g. Holland); as for the girls, inasmuch as the armies of the Allies were continually retreating, the zone des armées (particularly in the case of Belgium) was always including new cities, whose petites femmes became automatically subject to arrest. It was not to be supposed that all the women of La Ferté were putains: there were a large number of respectable women, the wives of prisoners, who met their husbands at specified times on the floor below the men's quarters, whither man and woman were duly and separately conducted by plantons. In this case no charges had been preferred against the women; they were voluntary prisoners, who had preferred to freedom this living in proximity to their husbands. Many of them had children; some babies. In addition there were certain femmes honnettes whose nationality, as in the case of the men, had cost them their liberty; Marguerite the washerwoman, for example, was a German.

La Ferté Macé was not properly speaking a prison, but a Porte or Detention Camp: that is to say, persons sent to it were held for a Commission, composed of an official, a lawyer, and a captain of gendarmes, which inspected the Camp and passed upon each case in turn for the purpose of determining the guiltiness of the suspected party. If the latter were found guilty by the Commission, he or she was sent off to a regular prison camp for the duration of the war; if not guilty, he or she was (in theory) set free. The Commission came to La Ferté once every three months. It should be added that there were prisoners who had passed the Commission, two, three, four, and even five times, without any appreciable result; there were prisonierès who had remained in La Ferté a year, and even eighteen months.

The authorities at La Ferté consisted of the Directeur, or general overlord, the Surveillant, who had the plantons (orderlies) under him and was responsible to the Directeur for the administration of the camp, and the Gestionnaire (who kept the accounts). As assistant, the Surveillant had a mail clerk who acted as translator on occasion. Twice a week the camp was visited by a regular French army doctor (médecin major) who was supposed to prescribe in severe cases and to give the women venereal inspection at regular intervals. The daily routine of attending to minor ailments and injuries was in the hands of Monsieur Ree-shar (Richard), who knew probably less about medicine than any man living and was an ordinary prisoner like all of us, but whose impeccable conduct merited cosy quarters. A sweeper was appointed from time to time by the Surveillant, acting for the Directeur, from the inhabitants of La Ferté; as was also a cook's assistant. The regular cook was a fixture, and a Boche like the other fixtures, Marguerite and Richard. This fact might seem curious were it not that the manner, appearance and actions of the Directeur himself proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was all which the term Boche could possibly imply.

"He's a son-of-a-bitch," B. said heartily. "They took me up to him when I came two days ago. As soon as he saw me he bellowed: 'Imbécile et inchrétien!'; then he called me a great lot of other things, including Shame of my country, Traitor to the sacred cause of Liberty, Contemptible coward and Vile sneaking spy. When he got all through I said 'I don't understand French.' You should have seen him then."

Separation of the sexes was enforced, not, it is true, with success, but with a commendable ferocity. The punishments for both men and girls were dry bread and cabinot.

"What on earth is cabinot?" I demanded.

There were various cabinots: each sex had its regular cabinot, and there were certain extra ones. B. knew all about them from Harree and Pompom, who spent nearly all their time in the cabinot. They were rooms about nine feet square and six feet high. There was no light and no floor, and the ground (three were on the ground floor) was always wet and often a good many inches under water. The occupant on entering was searched for tobacco, deprived of his or her mattress and blanket, and invited to sleep on the ground on some planks. One didn't need to write a letter to a member of the opposite sex to get cabinot, or even to call a planton embusqué--there was a woman, a foreigner, who, instead of sending a letter to her embassy through the bureau (where all letters were read by the mail clerk to make sure that they said nothing disagreeable about the authorities or conditions of La Ferté) tried to smuggle it outside, and got twenty-eight days of cabinot. She had previously written three times, handing the letters to the Surveillant, as per regulations, and had received no reply. Fritz, who had no idea why he was arrested and was crazy to get in touch with his embassy, had likewise written several letters, taking the utmost care to state the facts only and always handing them in; but he had never received a word in return. The obvious inference was that letters from a foreigner to his embassy were duly accepted by the Surveillant (Warden), but rarely, if ever, left La Ferté.

B. and I were conversing merrily àpropos the God-sent miracle of our escape from Vingt-et-Un, when a benign-faced personage of about fifty with sparse greyish hair and a Benjamin Franklin expression appeared on the other side of the fence, from the direction of the door through which I had passed after bumping the beefy bull. "Planton" it cried heavily to the wooden-handed one, "Two men to go get water." Harree and Pompom were already at the gate with the archaic water-wagon, the former pushing from behind and the latter in the shafts. The guardian of the cour walked up and opened the gate for them, after ascertaining that another planton was waiting at the corner of the building to escort them on their mission. A little way from the cour, the stone wall (which formed one of its boundaries and which ran parallel to the other stone wall dividing the two cours) met the prison building; and here was a huge double door, twice padlocked, through which the waterseekers passed on to the street. There was a sort of hydrant up the street a few hundred yards, I was told. The cook (Benjamin F., that is) required from three to six wagonfuls of water twice a day, and in reward for the labour involved in its capture was in the habit of giving a cup of coffee to the captors. I resolved that I would seek water at the earliest opportunity.

Harree and Pompom had completed their third and final trip and returned from the kitchen, smacking their lips and wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands. I was gazing airily into the muddy sky, when a roar issued from the door-way:

"Monter les hommes!" or "Send the men up!"

It was the beefy-necked. We filed from the cour, through the door, past a little window which I was told belonged to the kitchen, down the clammy corridor, up the three flights of stairs, to the door of The Enormous Room. Padlocks were unlocked, chains rattled, and the door thrown open. We entered. The Enormous Room received us in silence. The door was slammed and locked behind us by the planton, whom we could hear descending the gnarled and filthy stairs.

In the course of a half-hour, which time, as I was informed, intervened between the just-ended morning promenade and the noon meal which was the next thing on the program, I gleaned considerable information concerning the daily schedule of La Ferté. A typical day was divided by planton-cries as follows:

"Café," "Corvée d'eau," "Nettoyage de Chambre," "Monter les Hommes," "A la soupe les hommes."

The most terrible cry of all, and which was not included in the regular program of planton-cries, consisted of the words:

"Aux douches les hommes"--when all, sick, dead and dying not excepted, descended to the baths. Although les douches came only once in 15 days, such was the terror they inspired that it was necessary for the planton to hunt under mattresses for people who would have preferred death itself.

Upon remarking that corvée d'eau must be excessively disagreeable, I was informed that it had its bright side, viz., that in going to and from the sewer one could easily exchange a furtive signal with the women who always took pains to be at their windows at that moment. Influenced perhaps by this, Harree and Pompom were in the habit of doing their friends' corvées for a consideration. The girls, I was further instructed, had their corvée (as well as their meals) just after the men; and the miraculous stupidity of the plantons had been known to result in the coincidence of the two.

At this point somebody asked me how I had enjoyed my shower?

I was replying in terms of unmeasured opprobrium when I was interrupted by that gruesome clanking and rattling which announced the opening of the door. A moment later it was thrown wide, and the beefy-neck stood in the doorway, a huge bunch of keys in his paw, and shouted:

"A la soupe les hommes."

The cry was lost in a tremendous confusion, a reckless thither-and-hithering of humanity, everyone trying to be at the door, spoon in hand, before his neighbour. B. said calmly, extracting his own spoon from beneath his mattress on which we were seated: "They'll give you yours downstairs and when you get it you want to hide it or it'll be pinched"--and in company with Monsieur Bragard, who had refused the morning promenade, and whose gentility would not permit him to hurry when it was a question of such a low craving as hunger, we joined the dancing roaring throng at the door. I was not too famished myself to be unimpressed by the instantaneous change which had come over The Enormous Room's occupants. Never did Circe herself cast upon men so bestial an enchantment. Among these faces convulsed with utter animalism I scarcely recognised my various acquaintances. The transformation produced by the planton's shout was not merely amazing; it was uncanny, and not a little thrilling. These eyes bubbling with lust, obscene grins sprouting from contorted lips, bodies unclenching and clenching in unctuous gestures of complete savagery, convinced me by a certain insane beauty. Before the arbiter of their destinies some thirty creatures, hideous and authentic, poised, cohering in a sole chaos of desire; a fluent and numerous cluster of vital inhumanity. As I contemplated this ferocious and uncouth miracle, this beautiful manifestation of the sinister alchemy of hunger, I felt that the last vestige of individualism was about utterly to disappear, wholly abolished in a gambolling and wallowing throb.

The beefy-neck bellowed:

"Are you all here?"

A shrill roar of language answered. He looked contemptuously around him, upon the thirty clamouring faces each of which wanted to eat him--puttees, revolver and all. Then he cried:

"Allez, descendez."

Squirming, jostling, fighting, roaring, we poured slowly through the doorway. Ridiculously. Horribly. I felt like a glorious microbe in huge absurd din irrevocably swathed. B. was beside me. A little ahead Monsieur Auguste's voice protested. Count Bragard brought up the rear.

When we reached the corridor nearly all the breath was knocked out of me. The corridor being wider than the stairs allowed me to inhale and look around. B. was yelling in my ear:

"Look at the Hollanders and the Belgians! They're always ahead when it comes to food!"

Sure enough: John the Bathman, Harree and Pompom were leading this extraordinary procession. Fritz was right behind them, however, and pressing the leaders hard. I heard Monsieur Auguste crying in his child's voice:

"If every-body goes slow-er we will ar-rive soon-er. You mustn't act like that!"

Then suddenly the roar ceased. The mêlée integrated. We were marching in orderly ranks. B. said:

"The Surveillant!"

At the end of the corridor, opposite the kitchen window, there was a flight of stairs. On the third stair from the bottom stood (teetering a little slowly back and forth, his lean hands joined behind him and twitching regularly, a kepi tilted forward on his cadaverous head so that its visor almost hid the weak eyes sunkenly peering from under droopy eyebrows, his pompous rooster-like body immaculately attired in a shiny uniform, his puttees sleeked, his cross polished)--The Fencer. There was a renovated look about him which made me laugh. Also his pose was ludicrously suggestive of Napoleon reviewing the armies of France.

Our column's first rank moved by him. I expected it to continue ahead through the door and into the open air, as I had myself done in going from les douches to le cour; but it turned a sharp right and then sharp left, and I perceived a short hall, almost hidden by the stairs. In a moment I had passed The Fencer myself and entered the hall. In another moment I was in a room, pretty nearly square, filled with rows of pillars. On turning into the hall the column had come almost to a standstill. I saw that the reason for this slowing-down lay in the fact that on entering the room every man in turn passed a table and received a piece of bread from the chef. When B. and I came opposite the table the dispenser of bread smiled pleasantly and nodded to B., then selected a large hunk and pushed it rapidly into B.'s hands with an air of doing something which he shouldn't. B. introduced me, whereupon the smile and selection was repeated.

"He thinks I'm a German," B. explained in a whisper, "and that you are a German too." Then aloud, to the cook: "My friend here needs a spoon. He just got here this morning and they haven't given him one."

The excellent person at the bread table hereupon said to me: "You shall go to the window and say I tell you to ask for spoon and you will catch one spoon"--and I broke through the waiting line, approached the kitchen-window, and demanded of a roguish face within:

"A spoon, please."

The roguish face, which had been singing in a high faint voice to itself, replied critically but not unkindly:

"You're a new one?"

I said that I was, that I had arrived late last night.

It disappeared, reappeared, and handed me a tin spoon and cup, saying:

"You haven't a cup?"--"No" I said.

"Here. Take this. Quick." Nodding in the direction of the Surveillant, who was standing all this time on the stairs behind me.

I had expected from the cook's phrase that something would be thrown at me which I should have to catch, and was accordingly somewhat relieved at the true state of affairs. On re-entering the salle à manger I was greeted by many cries and wavings, and looking in their direction perceived everybody uproariously seated at wooden benches which were placed on either side of an enormous wooden table. There was a tiny gap on one bench where a place had been saved for me by B., with the assistance of Monsieur Auguste, Count Bragard, Harree and several other fellow-convicts. In a moment I had straddled the bench and was occupying the gap, spoon and cup in hand, and ready for anything.

The din was perfectly terrific. It had a minutely large quality. Here and there, in a kind of sonal darkness, solid sincere unintelligible absurd wisps of profanity heavily flickered. Optically the phenomenon was equally remarkable: seated waggingly swaying corpselike figures, swaggering, pounding with their little spoons, roaring, hoarse, unkempt. Evidently Monsieur le Surveillant had been forgotten. All at once the roar bulged unbearably. The roguish man, followed by the chef himself, entered with a suffering waddle, each of them bearing a huge bowl of steaming something. At least six people immediately rose, gesturing and imploring: "Ici"--"Mais non, ici"--"Mettez par ici"--

The bearers plumped their burdens carefully down, one at the head of the table and one in the middle. The men opposite the bowls stood up. Every man seized the empty plate in front of him and shoved it into his neighbour's hand; the plates moved toward the bowls, were filled amid uncouth protestations and accusations--"Mettez plus que ça"--"C'est pas juste, alors"--"Donnez-moi encore de pommes"--"Nom de Dieu, il n'y a pas assez"--"Cochon, qu'est-ce qu'il veut?"--"Shut up"--"Gott-ver-dummer"--and returned one by one. As each man received his own, he fell upon it with a sudden guzzle.

Eventually, in front of me, solemnly sat a faintly-smoking urine-coloured circular broth, in which soggily hung half-suspended slabs of raw potato. Following the example of my neighbours, I too addressed myself to La Soupe. I found her luke-warm, completely flavourless. I examined the hunk of bread. It was almost bluish in colour; in taste mouldy, slightly sour. "If you crumb some into the soup," remarked B., who had been studying my reactions from the corner of his eye, "they both taste better." I tried the experiment. It was a complete success. At least one felt as if one were getting nourishment. Between gulps I smelled the bread furtively. It smelled rather much like an old attic in which kites and other toys gradually are forgotten in a gentle darkness.

B. and I were finishing our soup together when behind and somewhat to the left there came the noise of a lock being manipulated. I turned and saw in one corner of the salle à manger a little door, shaking mysteriously. Finally it was thrown open, revealing a sort of minute bar and a little closet filled with what appeared to be groceries and tobacco; and behind the bar, standing in the closet, a husky, competent-looking lady. "It's the canteen," B. said. We rose, spoon in hand and breadhunk stuck on spoon, and made our way to the lady. I had, naturally, no money; but B. reassured me that before the day was over I should see the Gestionnaire and make arrangements for drawing on the supply of ready cash which the gendarmes who took me from Gré had confided to The Surveillant's care; eventually I could also draw on my account with Norton-Harjes in Paris; meantime he had quelques sous which might well go into chocolate and cigarettes. The large lady had a pleasant quietness about her, a sort of simplicity, which made me extremely desirous of complying with B.'s suggestion. Incidentally I was feeling somewhat uncertain in the region of the stomach, due to the unique quality of the lunch which I had just enjoyed, and I brightened at the thought of anything as solid as chocolate. Accordingly we purchased (or rather B. did) a paquet jaune and a cake of something which was not Meunier. And the remaining sous we squandered on a glass apiece of red acrid pinard, gravely and with great happiness pledging the hostess of the occasion and then each other.

With the exception of ourselves hardly anyone patronized the canteen, noting which I felt somewhat conspicuous. When, however, Harree Pompom and John the Bathman came rushing up and demanded cigarettes my fears were dispelled. Moreover the pinard was excellent.

"Come on! Arrange yourselves!" the bull-neck cried hoarsely as the five of us were lighting up; and we joined the line of fellow-prisoners with their breads and spoons, gaping, belching, trumpeting fraternally, by the doorway.

"Tout le monde en haut!" this planton roared.

Slowly we filed through the tiny hall, past the stairs (empty now of their Napoleonic burden), down the corridor, up the creaking gnarled damp flights, and (after the inevitable pause in which the escort rattled chains and locks) into The Enormous Room.

This would be about ten thirty.

Just what I tasted, did, smelled, saw, and heard, not to mention touched, between ten thirty and the completion of the evening meal (otherwise the four o'clock soup) I am quite at a loss to say. Whether it was that glass of pinard (plus, or rather times, the astonishing exhaustion bequeathed me by my journey of the day before) which caused me to enter temporarily the gates of forgetfulness, or whether the sheer excitement attendant upon my ultra-novel surroundings proved too much for an indispensable part of my so-called mind--I do not in the least know. I am fairly certain that I went on afternoon promenade. After which I must surely have mounted to await my supper in The Enormous Room. Whence (after the due and proper interval) I doubtless descended to the clutches of La Soupe Extraordinaire ... yes, for I perfectly recall the cry which made me suddenly to re-enter the dimension of distinctness ... and by Jove I had just finished a glass of pinard ... somebody must have treated me ... we were standing together, spoon in hand ... when we heard--

"A la promenade," ... we issued en queue, firmly grasping our spoons and bread, through the dining-room door. Turning right we were emitted, by the door opposite the kitchen, from the building itself into the open air. A few steps and we passed through the little gate in the barbed wire fence of the cour.

Greatly refreshed by my second introduction to the canteen, and with the digestion of the somewhat extraordinary evening meal apparently assured, I gazed almost intelligently around me. Count Bragard had declined the evening promenade in favour of The Enormous Room, but I perceived in the crowd the now familiar faces of the three Hollanders--John, Harree and Pompom--likewise of The Bear, Monsieur Auguste, and Fritz. In the course of the next hour I had become, if not personally, at least optically acquainted with nearly a dozen others.

Somewhat overawed by the animals Harree and Pompom (but nevertheless managing to overawe a goodly portion of his fellow-captives) an extraordinary human being paced the cour. On gazing for the first time directly at him I experienced a feeling of nausea. A figure inclined to corpulence, dressed with care, remarkable only above the neck--and then what a head! It was large, and had a copious mop of limp hair combed back from the high forehead--hair of a disagreeable blond tint, dutch-cut behind, falling over the pinkish soft neck almost to the shoulders. In this pianist's or artist's hair, which shook en masse when the owner walked, two large and outstanding and altogether brutal white ears tried to hide themselves. The face, a cross between classic Greek and Jew, had a Reynard expression, something distinctly wily and perfectly disagreeable. An equally with the hair blond moustache--or rather mustachios projectingly important--waved beneath the prominent nostrils, and served to partially conceal the pallid mouth, weak and large, whose lips assumed from time to time a smile which had something almost foetal about it. Over the even weaker chin was disposed a blond goatee. The cheeks were fatty. The continually perspiring forehead exhibited innumerable pinkish pock-marks. In conversing with a companion this being emitted a disgusting smoothness, his very gestures were oily like his skin. He wore a pair of bloated wristless hands, the knuckles lost in fat, with which he smoothed the air from time to time. He was speaking low and effortless French, completely absorbed in the developing ideas which issued fluently from his mustachios. About him there clung an aura of cringing. His hair whiskers and neck looked as if they were trick neck whiskers and hair, as if they might at any moment suddenly disintegrate, as if the smoothness of his eloquence alone kept them in place.

We called him Judas.

Beside him, clumsily keeping the pace but not the step, was a tallish effeminate person whose immaculate funereal suit hung loosely upon an aged and hurrying anatomy. He wore a big black cap on top of his haggard and remarkably clean-shaven face, the most prominent feature of which was a red nose, which sniffed a little now and then as if its owner was suffering from a severe cold. This person emanated age, neatness and despair. Aside from the nose which compelled immediate attention, his face consisted of a few large planes loosely juxtaposed and registering pathos. His motions were without grace. He had a certain refinement. He could not have been more than forty-five. There was worry on every inch of him. Possibly he thought that he might die. B. said "He's a Belgian, a friend of Count Bragard, his name is Monsieur Pet-airs." From time to time Monsieur Pet-airs remarked something delicately and pettishly in a gentle and weak voice. His adam's-apple, at such moments, jumped about in a longish slack wrinkled skinny neck which was like the neck of a turkey. To this turkey the approach of Thanksgiving inspired dread. From time to time M. Pet-airs looked about him sidewise as if he expected to see a hatchet. His hands were claws, kind, awkward and nervous. They twitched. The bony and wrinkled things looked as if they would like to close quickly upon a throat.

B. called my attention to a figure squatting in the middle of the cour with his broad back against one of the more miserable trees. This figure was clothed in a remarkably picturesque manner: it wore a dark sombrero-like hat with a large drooping brim, a bright red gipsy shirt of some remarkably fine material with huge sleeves loosely falling, and baggy corduroy trousers whence escaped two brown, shapely, naked feet. On moving a little I discovered a face--perhaps the handsomest face that I have ever seen, of a gold brown color, framed in an amazingly large and beautiful black beard. The features were finely formed and almost fluent, the eyes soft and extraordinarily sensitive, the mouth delicate and firm beneath a black moustache which fused with the silky and wonderful darkness falling upon the breast. The face contained a beauty and dignity which, as I first saw it, annihilated the surrounding tumult without an effort. Around the carefully formed nostrils there was something almost of contempt. The cheeks had known suns of which I might not think. The feet had travelled nakedly in countries not easily imagined. Seated gravely in the mud and noise of the cour, under the pitiful and scraggly pommier ... behind the eyes lived a world of complete strangeness and silence. The composure of the body was graceful and Jovelike. This being might have been a prophet come out of a country nearer to the sun. Perhaps a god who had lost his road and allowed himself to be taken prisoner by le gouvernement français. At least a prince of a dark and desirable country, a king over a gold-skinned people who would return when he wished to his fountains and his houris. I learned upon inquiry that he travelled in various countries with a horse and cart and his wife and children, selling bright colours to the women and men of these countries. As it turned out, he was one of the Delectable Mountains; to discover which I had come a long and difficult way. Wherefore I shall tell you no more about him for the present, except that his name was Joseph Demestre.

We called him The Wanderer.

I was still wondering at my good luck in occupying the same miserable yard with this exquisite personage when a hoarse, rather thick voice shouted from the gate: "L'américain!"

It was a planton, in fact the chief planton for whom all ordinary plantons had unutterable respect and whom all mere men unutterably hated. It was the planton into whom I had had the distinguished honour of bumping shortly after my visit to le bain.

The Hollanders and Fritz were at the gate in a mob, all shouting "Which" in four languages.

This planton did not deign to notice them. He repeated roughly "L'américain." Then, yielding a point to their frenzied entreaties: "Le nouveau."

B. said to me "Probably he's going to take you to the Gestionnaire. You're supposed to see him when you arrive. He's got your money and will keep it for you, and give you an allowance twice a week. You can't draw more than 20 francs. I'll hold your bread and spoon."

"Where the devil is the American?" cried the planton.

"Here I am."

"Follow me."

I followed his back and rump and holster through the little gate in the barbed wire fence and into the building, at which point he commanded "Proceed."

I asked "Where?"

"Straight ahead" he said angrily.

I proceeded. "Left!" he cried. I turned. A door confronted me. "Entrez," he commanded. I did. An unremarkable looking gentleman in a French uniform, sitting at a sort of table. "Monsieur le médecin, le nouveau." The doctor got up. "Open your shirt." I did. "Take down your pants." I did. "All right." Then, as the planton was about to escort me from the room: "English?" he asked with curiosity. "No" I said, "American." "Vraiment"--he contemplated me with attention. "South American are you?" "United States" I explained. "Vraiment"--he looked curiously at me, not disagreeably in the least. "Pourquoi vous êtes ici?" "I don't know" I said smiling pleasantly, "except that my friend wrote some letters which were intercepted by the French censor." "Ah," he remarked. "C'est tout."

And I departed. "Proceed!" cried the Black Holster. I retraced my steps, and was about to exit through the door leading to the cour, when "Stop! Nom de Dieu! Proceed!"

I asked "Where?" completely bewildered.

"Up," he said angrily.

I turned to the stairs on the left, and climbed.

"Not so fast there," he roared behind me.

I slowed up. We reached the landing. I was sure that the Gestionnaire was a very fierce man--probably a lean slight person who would rush at me from the nearest door saying "Hands up" in French, whatever that may be. The door opposite me stood open. I looked in. There was the Surveillant standing, hands behind back, approvingly regarding my progress. I was asking myself, Should I bow? when a scurrying and a tittering made me look left, along a dark and particularly dirty hall. Women's voices ... I almost fell with surprise. Were not those shadows' faces peering a little boldly at me from doors? How many girls were there--it sounded as if there were a hundred--

"Qu'est-ce que vous faites," etc., and the planton gave me a good shove in the direction of another flight of stairs. I obligingly ascended; thinking of the Surveillant as a spider, elegantly poised in the centre of his nefarious web, waiting for a fly to make too many struggles....

At the top of this flight I was confronted by a second hall. A shut door indicated the existence of a being directly over the Surveillant's holy head. Upon this door, lest I should lose time in speculating, was in ample letters inscribed:

GESTIONNAIRE

I felt unutterably lost. I approached the door. I even started to push it.

"Attends, Nom de Dieu." The planton gave me another shove, faced the door, knocked twice, and cried in accents of profound respect: "Monsieur le Gestionnaire"--after which he gazed at me with really supreme contempt, his neat pig-like face becoming almost circular.

I said to myself: This Gestionnaire, whoever he is, must be a very terrible person, a frightful person, a person utterly without mercy.

From within a heavy, stupid, pleasant voice lazily remarked:

"Entrez."

The planton threw the door open, stood stiffly on the threshold, and gave me the look which plantons give to eggs when plantons are a little hungry.

I crossed the threshold, trembling with (let us hope) anger.

Before me, seated at a table, was a very fat personage with a black skull cap perched upon its head. Its face was possessed of an enormous nose, on which pince-nez precariously roosted; otherwise the face was large, whiskered, very German and had three chins. Extraordinary creature. Its belly, as it sat, was slightly dented by the table-top, on which table-top rested several enormous tomes similar to those employed by the recording angel on the Day of Judgment, an inkstand or two, innumerable pens and pencils, and some positively fatal looking papers. The person was dressed in worthy and semi-dismal clothes amply cut to afford a promenade for the big stomach. The coat was of that extremely thin black material which occasionally is affected by clerks and dentists and more often by librarians. If ever I looked upon an honest German jowl, or even upon a caricature thereof, I looked upon one now. Such a round fat red pleasant beer-drinking face as reminded me only and immediately of huge meerschaum pipes, Deutsche Verein mottos, sudsy seidels of Wurtzburger, and Jacob Wirth's (once upon a time) brachwurst. Such pinlike pink merry eyes as made me think of Kris Kringle himself. Such extraordinarily huge reddish hands as might have grasped six seidels together in the Deutsche Küchen on 13th street. I gasped with pleasurable relief.

Monsieur le Gestionnaire looked as if he was trying very hard, with the aid of his beribboned glasses and librarian's jacket (not to mention a very ponderous gold watch-chain and locket that were supported by his copious equator) to appear possessed of the solemnity necessarily emanating from his lofty and responsible office. This solemnity, however, met its Waterloo in his frank and stupid eyes, not to say his trilogy of cheerful chins--so much so that I felt like crying "Wie gehts!" and cracking him on his huge back. Such an animal! A contented animal, a bulbous animal; the only living hippopotamus in captivity, fresh from the Nile.

He contemplated me with a natural, under the circumstances, curiosity. He even naively contemplated me. As if I were hay. My hay-coloured head perhaps pleased him, as a hippopotamus. He would perhaps eat me. He grunted, exposing tobacco-yellow tusks, and his tiny eyes twittered. Finally he gradually uttered, with a thick accent, the following extremely impressive dictum:

"C'est l'américain."

I felt much pleased, and said "Oui, j'suis américain, Monsieur."

He rolled half over backwards in his creaking chair with wonderment at such an unexpected retort. He studied my face with a puzzled air, appearing slightly embarrassed that before him should stand l'américain and that l'américain should admit it, and that it should all be so wonderfully clear. I saw a second dictum, even more profound than the first, ascending from his black vest. The chain and fob trembled with anticipation. I was wholly fascinated. What vast blob of wisdom would find its difficult way out of him? The bulbous lips wiggled in a pleasant smile.

"Voo parlez français."

This was delightful. The planton behind me was obviously angered by the congenial demeanour of Monsieur le Gestionnaire, and rasped with his boot upon the threshold. The maps to my right and left, maps of France, maps of the Mediterranean, of Europe, even, were abashed. A little anaemic and humble biped whom I had not previously noted, as he stood in one corner with a painfully deferential expression, looked all at once relieved. I guessed, and correctly guessed, that this little thing was the translator of La Ferté. His weak face wore glasses of the same type as the hippopotamus', but without a huge black ribbon. I decided to give him a tremor; and said to the hippo "Un peu, Monsieur," at which the little thing looked sickly.

The hippopotamus benevolently remarked "Voo parlez bien," and his glasses fell off. He turned to the watchful planton:

"Voo poovez aller. Je vooz appelerai."

The watchful planton did a sort of salute and closed the door after him. The skullcapped dignitary turned to his papers and began mouthing them with his huge hands, grunting pleasantly. Finally he found one, and said lazily:

"De quelle endroit que vooz êtes?"

"De Massachusetts," said I.

He wheeled round and stared dumbly at the weak faced one, who looked at a complete loss, but managed to stammer simperingly that it was a part of the United States.

"UH." The hippopotamus said.

Then he remarked that I had been arrested, and I agreed that I had been arrested.

Then he said "Have you got any money?" and before I could answer clambered heavily to his feet and, leaning over the table before which I stood, punched me gently.

"Uh," said the hippopotamus, sat down, and put on his glasses.

"I have your money here," he said. "You are allowed to draw a little from time to time. You may draw 20 francs, if you like. You may draw it twice a week."

"I should like to draw 20 francs now" I said, "in order to buy something at the canteen."

"You will give me a receipt," said the hippopotamus. "You want to draw 20 francs now, quite so." He began, puffing and grunting, to make handwriting of a peculiarly large and somewhat loose variety.

The weak face now stepped forward, and asked me gently: "Hugh er a merry can?"--so I carried on a brilliant conversation in pidgeon English about my relatives and America until interrupted by

"Uh."

The hip had finished.

"Sign your name, here," he said, and I did. He looked about in one of the tomes and checked something opposite my name, which I enjoyed seeing in the list of inmates. It had been spelled, erased, and re-spelled several times.

Monsieur le Gestionnaire contemplated my signature. Then he looked up, smiled and nodded recognition to someone behind me. I turned. There stood (having long since noiselessly entered) The Fencer Himself, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back and regarding me with approval, or as a keeper regards some rare monkey newly forwarded from its habitat by Hagenbeck.

The hippo pulled out a drawer. He found, after hunting, some notes. He counted two off, licking his big thumb with a pompous gesture, and having recounted them passed them heavily to me. I took them as a monkey takes a cocoanut.

"Do you wish?"--the Gestionnaire nodded toward me, addressing the Fencer.

"No, no" the Fencer said bowingly. "I have talked to him already."

"Call that planton!" cried Monsieur le Gestionnaire, to the little thing. The little thing ran out dutifully and called in a weak voice "Planton!"

A gruff but respectful "Oui" boomed from below-stairs. In a moment the planton of plantons had respectfully entered.

"The promenade being over, you can take him to the men's room," said the Surveillant, as the Hippo (immensely relieved and rather proud of himself) collapsed in his creaking chair.

Feeling like a suit-case in the clutches of a porter, I obediently preceded my escort down two flights, first having bowed to the hippopotamus and said "Merci"--to which courtesy the Hippo paid no attention. As we went along the dank hall on the ground floor, I regretted that no whispers and titters had greeted my descent. Probably the furious planton had seen to it that les femmes kept their rooms in silence. We ascended the three flights at the farther end of the corridor, the planton of all plantons unlocked and unbolted the door at the top landing, and I was swallowed by The Enormous Room.

I made for B., in my excitement allowing myself to wave the bank-notes. Instantly a host had gathered at my side. On my way to my bed--a distance of perhaps thirty feet--I was patted on the back by Harree, Pompom and Bathhouse John, congratulated by Monsieur Auguste, and saluted by Fritz. Arriving, I found myself the centre of a stupendous crowd. People who had previously had nothing to say to me, who had even sneered at my unwashed and unshaven exterior, now addressed me in terms of more than polite interest. Judas himself stopped in a promenade of the room, eyed me a moment, hastened smoothly to my vicinity, and made a few oily remarks of a pleasant nature. Simultaneously by Monsieur Auguste Harree and Fritz I was advised to hide my money and hide it well. There were people, you know ... who didn't hesitate, you understand.... I understood, and to the vast disappointment of the clamorous majority reduced my wealth to its lowest terms and crammed it in my trousers, stuffing several trifles of a bulky nature on top of it. Then I gazed quietly around with a William S. Hart expression calculated to allay any undue excitement. One by one the curious and enthusiastic faded from me, and I was left with the few whom I already considered my friends; with which few B. and myself proceeded to wile away the time remaining before Lumières Éteintes.

Incidentally, I exchanged (in the course of the next two hours) a considerable mass of two legged beings for a number of extremely interesting individuals. Also, in that somewhat limited period of time, I gained all sorts of highly enlightening information concerning the lives, habits and likes of half a dozen of as fine companions as it has ever been my luck to meet or, so far as I can now imagine, ever will be. In prison one learns several million things--if one is l'américain from Mass-a-chu-setts. When the ominous and awe-inspiring rattle on the further side of the locked door announced that the captors were come to bid the captives good night, I was still in the midst of conversation and had been around the world a number of times. At the clanking sound our little circle centripetally disintegrated, as if by sheer magic; and I was left somewhat dizzily to face a renewal of reality.

The door shot wide. The planton's almost indistinguishable figure in the doorway told me that the entire room was dark. I had not noticed the darkness. Somebody had placed a candle (which I recalled having seen on a table in the middle of the room when I looked up once or twice during the conversation) on a little shelf hard by the cabinet. There had been men playing at cards by this candle--now everybody was quietly reposing upon the floor along three sides of The Enormous Room. The planton entered. Walked over to the light. Said something about everybody being present, and was answered by a number of voices in a more or less profane affirmative. Strutted to and fro, kicked the cabinet, flashed an electric torch, and walked up the room examining each paillasse to make sure it had an occupant. Crossed the room at the upper end. Started down on my side. The white circle was in my eyes. The planton stopped. I stared stupidly and wearily into the glare. The light moved all over me and my bed. The rough voice behind the glare said:

"Vous êtes le nouveau?"

Monsieur Auguste, from my left, said quietly:

"Oui, c'est le nouveau."

The holder of the torch grunted, and (after pausing a second at B.'s bed to inspect a picture of perfect innocence) banged out through the door which whanged to behind him and another planton, of whose presence I had been hitherto unaware. A perfect symphony of "Bonne nuits" "Dormez biens" and other affectionate admonitions greeted the exeunt of the authorities. They were advised by various parts of the room in divers tongues to dream of their wives, to be careful of themselves in bed, to avoid catching cold, and to attend to a number of personal wants before retiring. The symphony gradually collapsed, leaving me sitting in a state of complete wonderment, dead tired and very happy, upon my paillasse.

"I think I'll turn in" I said to the neighbouring darkness.

"That's what I'm doing" B.'s voice said.

"By God" I said, "this is the finest place I've ever been in my life."

"It's the finest place in the world" said B.'s voice.

"Thank Heaven, we're out of A.'s way and the ---- Section Sanitaire," I grunted as I placed my boots where a pillow might have been imagined.

"Amen" B.'s voice said.

"If you put your shoes un-der your mat-tress" Monsieur Auguste's voice said, "you'll sleep well."

I thanked him for the suggestion, and did so. I reclined in an ecstasy of happiness and weariness. There could be nothing better than this. To sleep.

"Got a gottverdummer cigarette?" Harree's voice asked of Fritz.

"No bloody fear," Fritz's voice replied coolly.

Snores had already begun in various keys at various distances in various directions. The candle flickered a little; as if darkness and itself were struggling to the death, and darkness were winning.

"I'll get a chew from John" Harree's voice said.

Three or four paillasses away, a subdued conversation was proceeding. I found myself listening sleepily.

"Et puis," a voice said, "je suis reformé...."