rty blue
bundle of a human being.

With a piercing shriek, that cut like a gash through the uproar of the
ambulance engines, a sanitary train, the seventh since midnight, came
into the station, and so smoothly did it run by, its floors on a level
with the main floor, that it seemed an illusion, like a stage train. On
the platform stood some Zouaves waiting to unload the passengers, while
others cleared the barraques and helped the feeble to the ambulances.
There was a steady line of stretchers going out, yet the station was so
full that hardly a bit of the vast floor space was unoccupied. One
walked down a narrow path between a sea of bandaged bodies. Shouldering
what baggage they had, those able to walk plodded in a strange, slow
tempo to the waiting automobiles. All by themselves were about a hundred
poor, ragged Germans, wounded prisoners, brothers of the French in this
terrible fraternity of pain.

About four or five hundred assis (those able to sit up) were waiting on
benches at the end of the hall. Huddled round the rosy, flickering
braziers, they sat profoundly silent in the storm and din that moved
about them, rarely conversing with each other. I imagine that the
stupefaction, which is the physiological reaction of an intense
emotional and muscular effort, had not yet worn away. There were fine
heads here and there. Forgetful of his shattered arm, an old fellow,
with the face of Henri Quatre, eagle nose, beard, and all, sat with his
head sunken on his chest in mournful contemplation, and a fine-looking,
black-haired, dragoon kind of youth with the wildest of eyes clung like
grim death to a German helmet. The same expression of resigned fatalism
was common to all.

Sometimes the chauffeurs who were waiting for their clients got a chance
to talk to one of the soldiers. Eager for news, they clustered round the
wounded man, bombarding him with questions.

"Are the Boches retreating?"

"When did it begin?"

"Just where is the attack located?"

"Are things going well for us?"

The soldier, a big young fellow with a tanned face, somewhat pale from
the shock of a ripped-up forearm, answered the questions good-naturedly,
though the struggle had been on so great a scale that he could only tell
about his own hundred feet of trench. Indeed the substance of his
information was that there had been a terrible bombardment of the German
lines, and then an attack by the French which was still in progress.

"Are we goi