th
float away down stream, as his life must. He was so weary of
wrestling, weary of fighting, weary of hating, weary of everything,
that he was quite worn out; and tried to stupefy his heart with
forgetfulness as he dropped asleep. He heard vaguely, all about him,
the unwonted noises of the ship, slight noises, and scarcely audible
on this calm night in port; and he felt no more of the dreadful wound
which had tortured him hitherto but the discomfort and strain of its
healing.

He had been sleeping soundly when the stir of the crew roused him. It
was day; the tidal train had come down to the pier bringing the
passengers from Paris. Then he wandered about the vessel among all
these busy, bustling folks inquiring for their cabins, questioning and
answering each other at random, in the scare and fuss of a voyage
already begun. After greeting the captain and shaking hands with his
comrade the purser, he went into the saloon where some Englishmen were
already asleep in the corners. The large low room, with its white
marble panels framed in gilt beading, was furnished with
looking-glasses, which prolonged, in endless perspective, the long
tables flanked by pivot-seats covered with red velvet. It was fit,
indeed, to be the vast floating cosmopolitan dining hall, where the
rich natives of two continents might eat in common. Its magnificent
luxury was that of great hotels, and theaters, and public rooms; the
imposing and commonplace luxury which appeals to the eye of the
millionaire.

The doctor was on the point of turning into the second-class saloon,
when he remembered that a large cargo of emigrants had come on board
the night before, and he went down to the lower deck. There, in a sort
of basement, low and dark, like a gallery in a mine, Pierre could
discern some hundreds of men, women, and children, stretched on
shelves fixed one above another, or lying on the floor in heaps. He
could not see their faces, but could dimly make out this squalid,
ragged crowd of wretches, beaten in the struggle for life, worn out
and crushed, setting forth, each with a starving wife and weakly
children, for an unknown land where they hoped, perhaps, not to die
of hunger. And as he thought of their past labor--wasted labor, and
barren effort--of the mortal struggle taken up afresh and in vain each
day, of the energy expended by this tattered crew who were going to
begin again, not knowing where, this life of hideous misery, he longed
to cry