louds had slowly covered.
The hot carriages, those rolling boxes where the pilgrims ate and drank,
where the sick lay in a vitiated atmosphere, amid dizzying moans,
prayers, and hymns, became like so many furnaces.

And Marie was not the only one whose condition had been aggravated;
others also were suffering from the journey. Resting in the lap of her
despairing mother, who gazed at her with large, tear-blurred eyes, little
Rose had ceased to stir, and had grown so pale that Madame Maze had twice
leant forward to feel her hands, fearful lest she should find them cold.
At each moment also Madame Sabathier had to move her husband's legs, for
their weight was so great, said he, that it seemed as if his hips were
being torn from him. Brother Isidore too had just begun to cry out,
emerging from his wonted torpor; and his sister had only been able to
assuage his sufferings by raising him, and clasping him in her arms. La
Grivotte seemed to be asleep, but a continuous hiccoughing shook her, and
a tiny streamlet of blood dribbled from her mouth. Madame Vetu had again
vomited, Elise Rouquet no longer thought of hiding the frightful sore
open on her face. And from the man yonder, breathing hard, there still
came a lugubrious rattle, as though he were at every moment on the point
of expiring. In vain did Madame de Jonquiere and Sister Hyacinthe lavish
their attentions on the patients, they could but slightly assuage so much
suffering. At times it all seemed like an evil dream--that carriage of
wretchedness and pain, hurried along at express speed, with a continuous
shaking and jolting which made everything hanging from the pegs--the old
clothes, the worn-out baskets mended with bits of string--swing to and
fro incessantly. And in the compartment at the far end, the ten female
pilgrims, some old, some young, and all pitifully ugly, sang on without a
pause in cracked voices, shrill and dreary.

Then Pierre began to think of the other carriages of the train, that
white train which conveyed most, if not all, of the more seriously
afflicted patients; these carriages were rolling along, all displaying
similar scenes of suffering among the three hundred sick and five hundred
healthy pilgrims crowded within them. And afterwards he thought of the
other trains which were leaving Paris that day, the grey train and the
blue train* which had preceded the white one, the green train, the yellow
train, the pink train, the orange train which were