onscious stateliness. As the
Algerians sat round the braziers, their uniforms and brown skins
presented a contrast to the pallor of the French in their bedraggled
blue, but there was a marked similarity of facial expression. A certain
racial odor rose from the Orientals.

My first assignment, two Algerians and two Frenchmen, took me to an
ancient Catholic high school which had just been improvised into a
hospital for the Oriental troops. It lay, dirty, lonely, and grim, just
to one side of a great street on the edge of Paris, and had not been
occupied since its seizure by the State. Turning in through an enormous
door, lit by a gas globe flaring and flickering in the torrents of rain,
we found ourselves in an enormous, dark courtyard, where a half-dozen
ambulances were already waiting to discharge their clients. Along one
wall there was a flight of steps, and from somewhere beyond the door at
the end of this stair shone the faintest glow of yellow light.

It came from the door of a long-disused schoolroom, now turned into the
receiving-hall of this strange hospital. The big, high room was lit by
one light only, a kerosene hand lamp standing on the teacher's desk, and
so smoked was the chimney that the wick gave hardly more light than a
candle. There was just enough illumination to see about thirty Algerians
sitting at the school desks, their big bodies crammed into the little
seats, and to distinguish others lying in stretchers here and there upon
the floor. At the teacher's table a little French adjutant with a trim,
black mustache and a soldier interpreter were trying to discover the
identity of their visitors.

"Number 2215," (numero deux mille deux cent quinze), the officer cried;
and the interpreter, leaning over the adjutant's shoulder to read the
name, shouted, "Mehemet Ali."

There was no answer, and the Algerians looked round at each other, for
all the world like children in a school. It was very curious to see
these dark, heavy, wild faces bent over these disused desks.

"Number 2168" (numero deux mille cent soixante huit), cried the
adjutant.

"Abdullah Taleb," cried the interpreter.

"Moi," answered a voice from a stretcher in the shadows of the floor.

"Take him to room six," said the adjutant, indicating the speaker to a
pair of stretcher-bearers. In the quieter pauses the rain was heard
beating on the panes.

There are certain streets in Paris, equally unknown to tourist and
Parisian--obscure,