d among
the rushes on the bank. Madelan did not listen to me, and he continued
his strange colloquy with the other. He did not want us or any one else;
he had ceased to eat or to drink, and relieved himself as he lay, asking
neither help nor tendance.

One day, the wind blew the door of the room to, and there was no key to
open it. A long ladder was put up to the window, and a pane of glass was
broken to effect an entrance. Directly this was done, Madelan was heard,
continuing his dream aloud.

He died, and was at once replaced by the man with his skull battered in,
of whom we knew nothing, because when he came to us he could neither see
nor speak, and had nothing by way of history but a red and white ticket,
as large as the palm of a child's hand.

This man spent only one night in the room, filling the silence with
painful eructations, and thumping on the partition which separated him
from my bed.

Listening alertly, with the cold air from the open window blowing on
my face, I heard in turn the crowing of the cocks in the village, the
irregular breathing of Philippe, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion not
far from me, and the blows and the death-rattle of the man who took so
long to die. He became silent, however, in the morning, when the wind
began to drop, and the first detonation of the day boomed through the
vault-like quiet of the darkness.

Then we had as our neighbour the hospital orderly, Sergeant Gidel, who
was nearing his end, and whose cruel hiccough we had been unable to
alleviate for a week past. This man knew his business, he knew the
meaning of probe, of fever, of hardened abdomen. He knew too that he had
a bullet in the spinal cord. He never asked us for anything, and as
we dared not tell him lies, we were overcome by a kind of shame in his
presence. He stayed barely two days in the room, looking with dim eyes
at the engravings on the walls, and the Empire bureau on which vases
were piled.

But what need is there to tell of all those whom this unhappy room
swallowed up and ejected?

III

We have no lights this evening.... We must learn to do without them....
I grope my way along the passages, where the wind is muttering, to the
great staircase. Here there is a fitful lamp which makes one prefer
the darkness. I see the steps, which are white and smeared with mud,
pictures and tapestries, a sumptuous scheme of decoration flooded at the
bottom by filth and desolation. As I approach the room wh