with
audible instructions to be sure to put his part on the left side.

The waiting-rooms literally overflow with soldiers--some stretched out
on the benches, some on the floor; certain lying on their faces, others
on their backs, and still others pillowing their heads on their
knapsacks.

One feels their overpowering weariness, their leaden sleep after so
many nights of vigil; their absolute relaxation after so many
consecutive days in which all the vital forces have been stretched to
the breaking point.

From time to time an employe opens the door and shouts the departure of
a train. The soldiers rouse themselves, accustomed to being thus
disturbed in the midst of their slumber. One or two get up, stare
about them, collect their belongings and start for the platform,
noiselessly stepping over their sleeping companions. At the same time
newcomers, creeping in behind them, sink down into the places which
they have just forsaken, while they are still warm.

On a number of baggage trucks ten or a dozen Moroccan soldiers have
seated themselves, crosslegged, and draped in their noble burnous, they
gently puff smoke into the air, without a movement, without a gesture,
without a sound, apparently utterly oblivious to the noisy employes, or
the thundering of the passing trains.

On the platform people walk up and down, up and down; certain among
them taking a marked interest in the old-fashioned, wheezing
locomotives which seem fairly to stagger beneath the long train of
antiquated coaches hitched behind them.

Here, of course, are to be found the traditional groups in evidence at
every station; a handful of people in deep mourning on their way to a
funeral; a little knot of Sisters of Charity, huddled together in an
obscure corner reciting their rosary; families of refugees whom the
tempest has driven from their homes--whole tribes dragging with them
their old people and their children who moan and weep incessantly.
Their servants loaded down with relics saved from the disaster in
heavy, clumsy, ill-tied bundles, are infinitely pitiable to behold.
They are all travelling straight ahead of them with no determined end
in view. They seem to have been on the way so long, and yet they are
in no haste to arrive. Hunger gnawing them, they produce their
provisions, and having seated themselves on their luggage, commence a
repast, eating most slowly, the better to kill time while waiting for a
train that refuses to put i