d.

The sick man at last reached the hospital to which he had been ordered.
It was a dreary structure, looking out on one side upon a damp garden,
on the other on a dark court. Twenty beds, two arm-chairs, and a stove,
were the furniture of the large room to which Jack was carried. Five
or six phantoms in cotton nightcaps looked up from a game of dominos
to inspect him, and two or three more started from the stove as if
frightened.

The corner of the room was brightened by an altar to the Virgin,
decorated with flowers, candles, and lace; and near by was the desk of
the matron, who came forward, and in a soft voice, the tones of which
seemed half lost among the folds of her veil, said:

"Poor fellow, how sick he looks! he must go to bed at once. We have no
bed yet, but the one at the end there will soon be empty. While we are
waiting, we will put him on a couch."

This couch was placed close to the bed "that would soon be empty," from
whence were heard long sighs, dreary enough in themselves, but made a
thousand times more melancholy by the utter indifference with which they
were heard by the others in the room. The man was dying, but Jack
was himself too ill to notice this. He hardly heard Belisaire's "_au
revoir_" nor the rattling of dishes as the soup was distributed, nor
a whispering at his side; he was not asleep, but exhausted by fatigue.
Suddenly a woman's voice, calm and clear, said, "Let us pray."

He saw the dim outline of a woman kneeling near the altar, but in vain
did he attempt to follow the words that fell rapidly from her lips. The
concluding sentence reached him, however.

"Protect, O God, my friends and my enemies, all prisoners and
travellers, the sick and the dying."

Jack slept a feverish sleep, and his dreams were a confused mixture
of prisoners rattling their chains, and of travellers wandering over
endless roads. He was one of these travellers: he was on a highway, like
that of Etiolles; Cecile and his mother were before him refusing to wait
until he could reach them; this he was prevented from doing by a row of
enormous machines, the pistons of which were moving with dizzy haste,
and from whose chimneys were pouring out dark volumes of smoke. Jack
determined to pass between them; he is seized by their iron arms, torn
and mangled, and scalded with the hot steam; but he got through and took
refuge in the Foret de Senart, amid the freshness of which Jack became
once more a child and was on