em it seemed
the acme of wit--truly Teutonic.

The convoy now invaded the park with its automobiles and trucks bearing
a red cross. A war hospital was going to be established in the castle.
The doctors were dressed in grayish green and armed the same as the
officers; they also imitated their freezing hauteur and repellent
unapproachableness. There came out of the drays hundreds of folding
cots, which were placed in rows in the different rooms. The furniture
that still remained was thrown out in a heap under the trees. Squads
of soldiers were obeying with mechanical promptitude the brief and
imperious orders. An odor of an apothecary shop, of concentrated
drugs, now pervaded the quarters, mixed with the strong smell of the
antiseptics with which they were sprinkling the walls in order to
disinfect the filthy remains of the nocturnal orgy.

Then he saw women clad in white, buxom girls with blue eyes and flaxen
hair. They were grave, bland, austere and implacable in appearance.
Several times they pushed Desnoyers out of their way as if they did not
see him. They looked like nuns, but with revolvers under their habits.

At midday other automobiles began to arrive, attracted by the enormous
white flag with the red cross, which was now waving from the castle
tower. They came from the division battling beyond the Marne. Their
metal fittings were dented by projectiles, their wind-shields broken by
star-shaped holes. From their interiors appeared men and more men; some
on foot, others on canvas stretchers--faces pale and rubicund, profiles
aquiline and snubby, red heads and skulls wrapped in white turbans stiff
with blood; mouths that laughed with bravado and mouths that groaned
with bluish lips; jaws supported with mummy-like bandages; giants in
agony whose wounds were not apparent; shapeless forms ending in a head
that talked and smoked; legs with hanging flesh that was dyeing the
First Aid wrappings with their red moisture; arms that hung as inert
as dead boughs; torn uniforms in which were conspicuous the tragic
vacancies of absent members.

This avalanche of suffering was quickly distributed throughout the
castle. In a few hours it was so completely filled that there was not a
vacant bed--the last arrivals being laid in the shadow of the trees. The
telephones were ringing incessantly; the surgeons in coarse aprons
were going from one side to the other, working rapidly; human life was
submitted to savage proceedings with