station-master's office flamed like a forge fire in the darkness of the
night. I had one leg numbed, I was shivering from cold, I descend to
warm up a bit. I walk up and down the platform, I go to look at the
engine, which they uncouple, and which they replace by another, and
walking by the office I hear the bills and the tic-tac of the telegraph.
The employee, with back turned to me, was stooping a little to the right
in such a way that from where I was placed, I could see but the back of
his head and the tip of his nose, which shone red and beaded with sweat,
while the rest of his figure disappeared in the shadow thrown by the
screen of a gas-jet.

They invite me to get back into the carriage, and I find my comrades
again, just as I had left them. That time I went to sleep for good. For
how long did my sleep last? I don't know--when a great cry woke me up:
"Paris! Paris!" I made a dash for the doorway. At a distance, against a
band of pale gold, stood out in black the smokestacks of factories and
workshops. We were at Saint-Denis; the news ran from car to car. Every
one was on his feet. The engine quickened its pace. The Gare du Nord
looms up in the distance. We arrive there, we get down, we throw
ourselves at the gates. One part of us succeeds in escaping, the others
are stopped by the employees of the railroad and by the troops; by force
they make us remount into a train that is getting up steam, and here we
are again, off for God knows where!

We roll onward again all day long. I am weary of looking at the rows
of houses and trees that spin by before my eyes; then, too, I have the
colic continually and I suffer. About four o'clock of the afternoon, the
engine slackens its speed, and stops at a landing-stage where awaits
us there an old general, around whom sports a flock of young men, with
headgear of red kepis, breached in red and shod with boots with yellow
spurs. The general passes us in review and divides us into two squads;
the one for the seminary, the other is directed toward the hospital. We
are, it seems, at Arras. Francis and we form part of the first squad.
They tumble us into carts stuffed with straw, and we arrive in front
of a great building that settles and seems about to collapse into the
street. We mount to the second story to a room that contains some thirty
beds; each one of us unbuckles his knapsack, combs himself, and sits
down. A doctor arrives.

"What is the trouble with you?" he asks of t