minutes later I heard outside the command "Halt!" to a
squad of soldiers. The doors opened and Javert reappeared, this
time in the full uniform of an officer. For the moment I thought he
had come with a firing squad and they were going to make short
shrift of me. The grim humor of disposing of my case thus
"directly" came home to me. But merely flicking the ashes from his
cigarette, he glanced round the room without offering the slightest
recognition, and then disappeared. How he made his change from
civilian clothes so quickly I can't understand. It seemed like a
vainglorious display of his uniform in order to let us take full
cognizance of his eminence.

I began now a survey of my surroundings. Our room was in fact a
hallway crammed with soldiers and prisoners. The soldiers, with
fixed bayonets in their rifles, stood guard at the door. The
prisoners, some thirty-five in number, were ranged on benches,
overturned boxes, and on the floor. We were of every description,
from well-groomed men of the city to artisans and peasants from
the fields. The most interesting of the peasants was a young fellow
charged with carrying dispatches through the lines to Antwerp. The
most interesting of the well-dressed urban group was a theater
manager charged with making his playhouse the center of
distribution for the forbidden newspapers smuggled into Brussels.
There was a Belgian soldier in uniform, woefully battered and
beaten; and for the first time I saw a German soldier without his
rifle. He, too, was a prisoner waiting trial, having been sent up to
the headquarters accused of muttering against an under officer.

All these facts I learned later. Then I sat paralyzed in an
atmosphere charged with smoke and silence. The smoke came
not from the prisoners, for to them it was forbidden, but from the
soldiers, who rolled it up in great clouds. The silence came from
the suspicion that one's next neighbor might be a spy planted
there to catch him in some unwary statement. Each man would
have sought relief from the strain by unbosoming his hopes and
fears to his neighbor, but he dared not. That is one fearful curse of
any cause that is buttressed by a system of espionage. It scatters
everywhere the seeds of suspicion. All society is shot through with
cynical distrust. It poisons the springs at the very source--one's
faith in his fellows. Ordinarily one regards the next man as a
neighbor until he proves himself a spy. In Europe he is a s