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The Enormous Room

by E. E. Cummings · English · Gutenberg #8446 · 557,575 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Enormous Room

Author: E. E. Cummings


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8446]
                Most recently updated: August 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8446

Credits: Eric Eldred, Thomas Berger, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENORMOUS ROOM ***

[Illustration]




The Enormous Room

by E. E. Cummings


Contents

 INTRODUCTION
 I. I BEGIN A PILGRIMAGE
 II. EN ROUTE
 III. A PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
 IV. LE NOUVEAU
 V. A GROUP OF PORTRAITS
 VI. APOLLYON
 VII. AN APPROACH TO THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS
 VIII. THE WANDERER
 IX. ZOO-LOO
 X. SURPLICE
 XI. JEAN LE NÈGRE
 XII. THREE WISE MEN
 XIII. I SAY GOOD-BYE TO LA MISÈRE




INTRODUCTION


“FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD, AND IS ALIVE AGAIN; HE WAS LOST; AND IS
FOUND.”


He was lost by the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps.

He was officially dead as a result of official misinformation.

He was entombed by the French Government.

It took the better part of three months to find him and bring him back
to life—with the help of powerful and willing friends on both sides of
the Atlantic. The following documents tell the story:

104 Irving Street,
Cambridge, December 8, 1917.


President Woodrow Wilson,
White House,
Washington, D. C.


Mr. President:

It seems criminal to ask for a single moment of your time. But I am
strongly advised that it would be more criminal to delay any longer
calling to your attention a crime against American citizenship in which
the French Government has persisted for many weeks—in spite of constant
appeals made to the American Minister at Paris; and in spite of
subsequent action taken by the State Department at Washington, on the
initiative of my friend, Hon. ——.

The victims are two American ambulance drivers, Edward Estlin Cummings
of Cambridge, Mass., and W—— S—— B——….

More than two months ago these young men were arrested, subjected to
many indignities, dragged across France like criminals, and closely
confined in a Concentration Camp at La Ferté Macé; where, according to
latest advices they still remain—awaiting the final action of the
Minister of the Interior upon the findings of a Commission which passed
upon their cases as long ago as October 17.

Against Cummings both private and official advices from Paris state
that there is no charge whatever. He has been subjected to this
outrageous treatment solely because of his intimate friendship with
young B——, whose sole crime is—so far as can be learned—that certain
letters to friends in America were misinterpreted by an over-zealous
French censor.

It only adds to the indignity and irony of the situation to say that
young Cummings is an enthusiastic lover of France and so loyal to the
friends he has made among the French soldiers, that even while
suffering in health from his unjust confinement, he excuses the
ingratitude of the country he has risked his life to serve by calling
attention to the atmosphere of intense suspicion and distrust that has
naturally resulted from the painful experience which France has had
with foreign emissaries.

Be assured, Mr. President, that I have waited long—it seems like
ages—and have exhausted all other available help before venturing to
trouble you.

1. After many weeks of vain effort to secure effective action by the
American Ambassador at Paris, Richard Norton of the Norton-Harjes
Ambulance Corps to which the boys belonged, was completely discouraged,
and advised me to seek help here.

2. The efforts of the State Department at Washington resulted as
follows:

i. A cable from Paris saying that there was no charge against Cummings
and intimating that he would speedily be released.

ii. A little later a second cable advising that Edward Estlin Cummings
had sailed on the Antilles and was reported lost.

iii. A week later a third cable correcting this cruel error and saying
the Embassy was renewing efforts to locate Cummings—apparently still
ignorant even of the place of his confinement.

After such painful and baffling experiences, I turn to you—burdened
though I know you to be, in this world crisis, with the weightiest task
ever laid upon any man.

But I have another reason for asking this favor. I do not speak for my
son alone; or for him and his friend alone. My son has a mother—as
brave and patriotic as any mother who ever dedicated an only son to a
great cause. The mothers of our boys in France have rights as well as
the boys themselves. My boy’s mother had a right to be protected from
the weeks of horrible anxiety and suspense caused by the inexplicable
arrest and imprisonment of her son. My boy’s mother had a right to be
spared the supreme agony caused by a blundering cable from Paris saying
that he had been drowned by a submarine. (An error which Mr. Norton
subsequently cabled that he had discovered six weeks before.) My boy’s
mother and all American mothers have a right to be protected against
all needless anxiety and sorrow.

Pardon me, Mr. President, but if I were President and your son were
suffering such prolonged injustice at the hands of France; and your
son’s mother had been needlessly kept in Hell as many weeks as my boy’s
mother has—I would do something to make American citizenship as sacred
in the eyes of Frenchmen as Roman citizenship was in the eyes of the
ancient world. Then it was enough to ask the question, “Is it lawful to
scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?” Now, in France, it
seems lawful to treat like a condemned criminal a man that is an
American, uncondemned and admittedly innocent!

Very respectfully,
EDWARD CUMMINGS


This letter was received at the White House. Whether it was received
with sympathy or with silent disapproval is still a mystery. A
Washington official, a friend in need and a friend indeed in these
trying experiences, took the precaution to have it delivered by
messenger. Otherwise, fear that it had been “lost in the mail” would
have added another twinge of uncertainty to the prolonged and exquisite
tortures inflicted upon parents by alternations of misinformation and
official silence. Doubtless the official stethoscope was on the heart
of the world just then; and perhaps it was too much to expect that even
a post-card would be wasted on private heart-aches.

In any event this letter told where to look for the missing
boys—something the French government either could not or would not
disclose, in spite of constant pressure by the American Embassy at
Paris and constant efforts by my friend Richard Norton, who was head of
the Norton-Harjes Ambulance organization from which they had been
abducted.

Release soon followed, as narrated in the following letter to Major ——
of the staff of the Judge Advocate General in Paris.

February 20, 1921.

My dear ——

Your letter of January 30th, which I have been waiting for with great
interest ever since I received your cable, arrived this morning. My son
arrived in New York on January 1st. He was in bad shape physically as a
result of his imprisonment: very much under weight, suffering from a
bad skin infection which he had acquired at the concentration camp.
However, in view of the extraordinary facilities which the detention
camp offered for acquiring dangerous diseases, he is certainly to be
congratulated on having escaped with one of the least harmful. The
medical treatment at the camp was quite in keeping with the general
standards of sanitation there; with the result that it was not until he
began to receive competent surgical treatment after his release and on
board ship that there was much chance of improvement. A month of
competent medical treatment here seems to have got rid of this painful
reminder of official hospitality. He is, at present, visiting friends
in New York. If he were here, I am sure he would join with me and with
his mother in thanking you for the interest you have taken and the
efforts you have made.

W—— S—— B—— is, I am happy to say, expected in New York this week by
the S. S. Niagara. News of his release and subsequently of his
departure came by cable. What you say about the nervous strain under
which he was living, as an explanation of the letters to which the
authorities objected, is entirely borne out by first-hand information.
The kind of badgering which the youth received was enough to upset a
less sensitive temperament. It speaks volumes for the character of his
environment that such treatment aroused the resentment of only one of
his companions, and that even this manifestation of normal human
sympathy was regarded as “suspicious.” If you are right in
characterizing B——’s condition as more or less hysterical, what shall
we say of the conditions which made possible the treatment which he and
his friend received? I am glad B—— wrote the very sensible and manly
letter to the Embassy, which you mention. After I have had an
opportunity to converse with him, I shall be in better position to
reach a conclusion in regard to certain matters about which I will not
now express an opinion.

I would only add that I do not in the least share your complacency in
regard to the treatment which my son received. The very fact that, as
you say, no charges were made and that he was detained on suspicion for
many weeks after the Commission passed on his case and reported to the
Minister of the Interior that he ought to be released, leads me to a
conclusion exactly opposite to that which you express. It seems to me
impossible to believe that any well-ordered government would fail to
acknowledge such action to have been unreasonable. Moreover, “detention
on suspicion” was a small part of what actually took place. To take a
single illustration, you will recall that after many weeks’ persistent
effort to secure information, the Embassy was still kept so much in the
dark about the facts, that it cabled the report that my son had
embarked on The Antilles and was reported lost. And when convinced of
that error, the Embassy cabled that it was renewing efforts to locate
my son. Up to that moment, it would appear that the authorities had not
even condescended to tell the United States Embassy where this innocent
American citizen was confined; so that a mistaken report of his death
was regarded as an adequate explanation of his disappearance. If I had
accepted this report and taken no further action, it is by no means
certain that he would not be dead by this time.

I am free to say, that in my opinion no self-respecting government
could allow one of its own citizens, against whom there has been no
accusation brought, to be subjected to such prolonged indignities and
injuries by a friendly government without vigorous remonstrance. I
regard it as a patriotic duty, as well as a matter of personal
self-respect, to do what I can to see that such remonstrance is made. I
still think too highly both of my own government and of the government
of France to believe that such an untoward incident will fail to
receive the serious attention it deserves. If I am wrong, and American
citizens must expect to suffer such indignities and injuries at the
hands of other governments without any effort at remonstrance and
redress by their own government, I believe the public ought to know the
humiliating truth. It will make interesting reading. It remains for my
son to determine what action he will take.

I am glad to know your son is returning. I am looking forward with
great pleasure to conversing with him.

I cannot adequately express my gratitude to you and to other friends
for the sympathy and assistance I have received. If any expenses have
been incurred on my behalf or on behalf of my son, I beg you to give me
the pleasure of reimbursing you. At best, I must always remain your
debtor.

With best wishes,

Sincerely yours,
EDWARD CUMMINGS


I yield to no one in enthusiasm for the cause of France. Her cause was
our cause and the cause of civilization; and the tragedy is that it
took us so long to find it out. I would gladly have risked my life for
her, as my son risked his and would have risked it again had not the
departure of his regiment overseas been stopped by the armistice.

France was beset with enemies within as well as without. Some of the
“suspects” were members of her official household. Her Minister of
Interior was thrown into prison. She was distracted with fear. Her
existence was at stake. Under such circumstances excesses were sure to
be committed. But it is precisely at such times that American citizens
most need and are most entitled to the protection of their own
government.

EDWARD CUMMINGS




THE ENORMOUS ROOM




I.
I BEGIN A PILGRIMAGE


In October, 1917, we had succeeded, my friend B. and I, in dispensing
with almost three of our six months’ engagement as Voluntary Drivers,
Sanitary Section 21, Ambulance Norton Harjes, American Red Cross, and
at the moment which subsequent experience served to capitalize, had
just finished the unlovely job of cleaning and greasing (_nettoyer_ is
the proper word) the own private flivver of the chief of section, a
gentleman by the convenient name of Mr. A. To borrow a
characteristic-cadence from Our Great President: the lively
satisfaction which we might be suspected of having derived from the
accomplishment of a task so important in the saving of civilization
from the clutches of Prussian tyranny was in some degree inhibited,
unhappily, by a complete absence of cordial relations between the man
whom fate had placed over us and ourselves. Or, to use the vulgar
American idiom, B. and I and Mr. A. didn’t get on well. We were in
fundamental disagreement as to the attitude which we, Americans, should
uphold toward the poilus in whose behalf we had volunteered assistance,
Mr. A. maintaining “you boys want to keep away from those dirty
Frenchmen” and “we’re here to show those bastards how they do things in
America,” to which we answered by seizing every opportunity for
fraternization. Inasmuch as eight “dirty Frenchmen” were attached to
the section in various capacities (cook, provisioner, chauffeur,
mechanician, etc.) and the section itself was affiliated with a branch
of the French army, fraternization was easy. Now when he saw that we
had not the slightest intention of adopting his ideals, Mr. A.
(together with the _sous-lieutenant_ who acted as his translator—for
the chief’s knowledge of the French language, obtained during several
years’ heroic service, consisted for the most part in “_Sar var_,”
“_Sar marche_,” and “_Deet donk moan vieux_”) confined his efforts to
denying us the privilege of acting as drivers, on the ground that our
personal appearance was a disgrace to the section. In this, I am bound
to say, Mr. A. was but sustaining the tradition conceived originally by
his predecessor, a Mr. P., a Harvard man, who until his departure from
Vingt-et-Un succeeded in making life absolutely miserable for B. and
myself. Before leaving this painful subject I beg to state that, at
least as far as I was concerned, the tradition had a firm foundation in
my own predisposition for uncouthness plus what _Le Matin_ (if we
remember correctly) cleverly nicknamed _La Boue Héroïque_.

Having accomplished the _nettoyage_ (at which we were by this time
adepts, thanks to Mr. A.’s habit of detailing us to wash any car which
its driver and _aide_ might consider too dirty a task for their own
hands) we proceeded in search of a little water for personal use. B.
speedily finished his ablutions. I was strolling carelessly and solo
from the cook-wagon toward one of the two tents—which protestingly
housed some forty huddling Americans by night—holding in my hand an
historic _morceau de chocolat_, when a spick, not to say span,
gentleman in a suspiciously quiet French uniform allowed himself to be
driven up to the _bureau_, by two neat soldiers with tin derbies, in a
Renault whose painful cleanliness shamed my recent efforts. This must
be a general at least, I thought, regretting the extremely undress
character of my uniform, which uniform consisted of overalls and a
cigarette.

Having furtively watched the gentleman alight and receive a ceremonious
welcome from the chief and the aforesaid French lieutenant who
accompanied the section for translatory reasons, I hastily betook
myself to one of the tents, where I found B. engaged in dragging all
his belongings into a central pile of frightening proportions. He was
surrounded by a group of fellow-heroes who hailed my coming with
considerable enthusiasm. “Your bunky’s leaving” said somebody. “Going
to Paris” volunteered a man who had been trying for three months to get
there. “Prison you mean” remarked a confirmed optimist whose
disposition had felt the effects of French climate.

Albeit confused by the eloquence of B.’s unalterable silence, I
immediately associated his present predicament with the advent of the
mysterious stranger, and forthwith dashed forth, bent on demanding from
one of the tin-derbies the high identity and sacred mission of this
personage. I knew that with the exception of ourselves everyone in the
section had been given his seven days’ leave—even two men who had
arrived later than we and whose turn should, consequently, have come
after ours. I also knew that at the headquarters of the Ambulance, _7
rue François Premier_, was Monsieur Norton, the supreme head of the
Norton Harjes fraternity, who had known my father in other days.
Putting two and two together I decided that this potentate had sent an
emissary to Mr. A. to demand an explanation of the various and sundry
insults and indignities to which I and my friend had been subjected,
and more particularly to secure our long-delayed permission.
Accordingly I was in high spirits as I rushed toward the _bureau_.

I didn’t have to go far. The mysterious one, in conversation with
_monsieur le sous-lieutenant_, met me half-way. I caught the words:
“And Cummings” (the first and last time that my name was correctly
pronounced by a Frenchman), “where is he?”

“Present,” I said, giving a salute to which neither of them paid the
slightest attention.

“Ah yes” impenetrably remarked the mysterious one in positively
sanitary English. “You shall put all your baggage in the car, at
once”—then, to tin-derby-the-first, who appeared in an occult manner at
his master’s elbow—“Go with him, get his baggage, at once.”

My things were mostly in the vicinity of the _cuisine_, where lodged
the _cuisinier, mécanicien, menuisier_, etc., who had made room for me
(some ten days since) on their own initiative, thus saving me the
humiliation of sleeping with nineteen Americans in a tent which was
always two-thirds full of mud. Thither I led the tin-derby, who
scrutinised everything with surprising interest. I threw _mes affaires_
hastily together (including some minor accessories which I was going to
leave behind, but which the t-d bade me include) and emerged with a
duffle-bag under one arm and a bed-roll under the other, to encounter
my excellent friends, the “dirty Frenchmen,” aforesaid. They all popped
out together from one door, looking rather astonished. Something by way
of explanation as well as farewell was most certainly required, so I
made a speech in my best French:

“Gentlemen, friends, comrades—I am going away immediately and shall be
guillotined tomorrow.”

—“Oh hardly guillotined I should say,” remarked t-d, in a voice which
froze my marrow despite my high spirits; while the cook and carpenter
gaped audibly and the mechanician clutched a hopelessly smashed
carburetor for support.

One of the section’s _voitures_, a F.I.A.T., was standing ready.
General Nemo sternly forbade me to approach the Renault (in which B.’s
baggage was already deposited) and waved me into the F.I.A.T., bed,
bed-roll and all; whereupon t-d leaped in and seated himself opposite
me in a position of perfect unrelaxation, which, despite my aforesaid
exultation at quitting the section in general and Mr. A. in particular,
impressed me as being almost menacing. Through the front window I saw
my friend drive away with t-d Number 2 and Nemo; then, having waved
hasty farewell to all _les Américains_ that I knew—three in number—and
having exchanged affectionate greetings with Mr. A. (who admitted he
was very sorry indeed to lose us), I experienced the jolt of the
clutch—and we were off in pursuit.

Whatever may have been the forebodings inspired by t-d Number 1’s
attitude, they were completely annihilated by the thrilling joy which I
experienced on losing sight of the accursed section and its asinine
inhabitants—by the indisputable and authentic thrill of going somewhere
and nowhere, under the miraculous auspices of someone and no one—of
being yanked from the putrescent banalities of an official
non-existence into a high and clear adventure, by a _deus ex machina_
in a grey-blue uniform, and a couple of tin derbies. I whistled and
sang and cried to my _vis-à-vis_: “By the way, who is yonder
distinguished gentleman who has been so good as to take my friend and
me on this little promenade?”—to which, between lurches of the groaning
F.I.A.T., t-d replied awesomely, clutching at the window for the
benefit of his equilibrium: “Monsieur le Ministre de Sureté de Noyon.”

Not in the least realizing what this might mean, I grinned. A
responsive grin, visiting informally the tired cheeks of my _confrère_,
ended by frankly connecting his worthy and enormous ears which were
squeezed into oblivion by the oversize _casque_. My eyes, jumping from
those ears, lit on that helmet and noticed for the first time an
emblem, a sort of flowering little explosion, or hair-switch rampant.
It seemed to me very jovial and a little absurd.

“We’re on our way to Noyon, then?”

T-d shrugged his shoulders.

Here the driver’s hat blew off. I heard him swear, and saw the hat
sailing in our wake. I jumped to my feet as the F.I.A.T. came to a
sudden stop, and started for the ground—then checked my flight in
mid-air and landed on the seat, completely astonished. T-d’s revolver,
which had hopped from its holster at my first move, slid back into its
nest. The owner of the revolver was muttering something rather
disagreeable. The driver (being an American of Vingt-et-Un) was backing
up instead of retrieving his cap in person. My mind felt as if it had
been thrown suddenly from fourth into reverse. I pondered and said
nothing.

On again—faster, to make up for lost time. On the correct assumption
that t-d does not understand English the driver passes the time of day
through the minute window:

“For Christ’s sake, Cummings, what’s up?”

“You got me,” I said, laughing at the delicate naiveté of the question.

“Did y’ do something to get pinched?”

“Probably,” I answered importantly and vaguely, feeling a new dignity.

“Well, if you didn’t, maybe B—— did.”

“Maybe,” I countered, trying not to appear enthusiastic. As a matter of
fact I was never so excited and proud. I was, to be sure, a criminal!
Well, well, thank God that settled one question for good and all—no
more _Section Sanitaire_ for me! No more Mr. A. and his daily lectures
on cleanliness, deportment, etc.! In spite of myself I started to sing.
The driver interrupted:

“I heard you asking the tin lid something in French. Whadhesay?”

“Said that gink in the Renault is the head cop of Noyon,” I answered at
random.

“GOODNIGHT. Maybe we’d better ring off, or you’ll get in wrong with”—he
indicated t-d with a wave of his head that communicated itself to the
car in a magnificent skid; and t-d’s derby rang out as the skid pitched
t-d the length of the F.I.A.T.

“You rang the bell then,” I commented—then to t-d: “Nice car for the
wounded to ride in,” I politely observed. T-d answered nothing….

Noyon.

We drive straight up to something which looks unpleasantly like a
feudal dungeon. The driver is now told to be somewhere at a certain
time, and meanwhile to eat with the Head Cop, who may be found just
around the corner—(I am doing the translating for t-d)—and, oh yes, it
seems that the Head Cop has particularly requested the pleasure of this
distinguished American’s company at _déjeuner_.

“Does he mean me?” the driver asked innocently.

“Sure,” I told him.

Nothing is said of B. or me.

Now, cautiously, t-d first and I a slow next, we descend. The F.I.A.T.
rumbles off, with the distinguished one’s backward-glaring head poked
out a yard more or less and that distinguished face so completely
surrendered to mystification as to cause a large laugh on my part.

“You are hungry?”

It was the erstwhile-ferocious speaking. A criminal, I remembered, is
somebody against whom everything he says and does is very cleverly made
use of. After weighing the matter in my mind for some moments I decided
at all cost to tell the truth, and replied:

“I could eat an elephant.”

Hereupon t-d led me to the Kitchen Itself, set me to eat upon a stool,
and admonished the cook in a fierce voice:

“Give this great criminal something to eat in the name of the French
Republic!”

And for the first time in three months I tasted Food.

T-d seated himself beside me, opened a huge jack-knife, and fell to,
after first removing his tin derby and loosening his belt.

One of the pleasantest memories connected with that irrevocable meal is
of a large, gentle, strong woman who entered in a hurry, and seeing me
cried out:

“What is it?”

“It’s an American, my mother,” t-d answered through fried potatoes.

“Why is he here?” the woman touched me on the shoulder, and satisfied
herself that I was real.

“The good God is doubtless acquainted with the explanation,” said t-d
pleasantly. “Not myself being the—”

“Ah, _mon pauvre_” said this very beautiful sort of woman. “You are
going to be a prisoner here. Everyone of the prisoners has a
_marraine_, do you understand? I am their _marraine_. I love them and
look after them. Well, listen: I will be your _marraine_, too.”

I bowed and looked around for something to pledge her in. T-d was
watching. My eyes fell on a huge glass of red pinard. “Yes, drink,”
said my captor, with a smile. I raised my huge glass.

“_A la santé de ma marraine charmante!_”

—This deed of gallantry quite won the cook (a smallish, agile
Frenchman) who shovelled several helps of potatoes on my already empty
plate. The tin derby approved also: “That’s right, eat, drink, you’ll
need it later perhaps.” And his knife guillotined another delicious
hunk of white bread.

At last, sated with luxuries, I bade adieu to my _marraine_ and allowed
t-d to conduct me (I going first, as always) upstairs and into a little
den whose interior boasted two mattresses, a man sitting at the table,
and a newspaper in the hands of the man.

“_C’est un Américain_,” t-d said by way of introduction. The newspaper
detached itself from the man who said: “He’s welcome indeed: make
yourself at home, Mr. American”—and bowed himself out. My captor
immediately collapsed on one mattress.

I asked permission to do the same on the other, which favor was
sleepily granted. With half-shut eyes my Ego lay and pondered: the
delicious meal it had just enjoyed; what was to come; the joys of being
a great criminal … then, being not at all inclined to sleep, I read _Le
Petit Parisien_ quite through, even to _Les Voies Urinaires._

Which reminded me—and I woke up t-d and asked: “May I visit the
_vespasienne_?”

“Downstairs,” he replied fuzzily, and readjusted his slumbers.

There was no one moving about in the little court. I lingered somewhat
on the way upstairs. The stairs were abnormally dirty. When I
reentered, t-d was roaring to himself. I read the journal through
again. It must have been about three o’clock.

Suddenly t-d woke up, straightened and buckled his personality, and
murmured: “It’s time, come on.”

_Le bureau de_ Monsieur le Ministre was just around the corner, as it
proved. Before the door stood the patient F.I.A.T. I was ceremoniously
informed by t-d that we would wait on the steps.

Well! Did I know any more?—the American driver wanted to know.

Having proved to my own satisfaction that my fingers could still roll a
pretty good cigarette, I answered: “No,” between puffs.

The American drew nearer and whispered spectacularly: “Your friend is
upstairs. I think they’re examining him.”

T-d got this; and though his rehabilitated dignity had accepted the
“makin’s” from its prisoner, it became immediately incensed:

“That’s enough,” he said sternly.

And dragged me _tout-à-coup_ upstairs, where I met B. and his t-d
coming out of the _bureau_ door. B. looked peculiarly cheerful. “I
think we’re going to prison all right,” he assured me.

Braced by this news, poked from behind by my t-d, and waved on from
before by M. le Ministre himself, I floated vaguely into a very washed,
neat, business-like and altogether American room of modest proportions,
whose door was immediately shut and guarded on the inside by my escort.

Monsieur le Ministre said:

“Lift your arms.”

Then he went through my pockets. He found cigarettes, pencils, a
jack-knife and several francs. He laid his treasures on a clean table
and said: “You are not allowed to keep these. I shall be responsible.”
Then he looked me coldly in the eye and asked if I had anything else?

I told him that I believed I had a handkerchief.

He asked me: “Have you anything in your shoes?”

“My feet,” I said, gently.

“Come this way,” he said frigidly, opening a door which I had not
remarked. I bowed in acknowledgment of the courtesy, and entered room
number 2.

I looked into six eyes which sat at a desk.

Two belonged to a lawyerish person in civilian clothes, with a bored
expression, plus a moustache of dreamy proportions with which the owner
constantly imitated a gentleman ringing for a drink. Two appertained to
a splendid old dotard (a face all ski-jumps and toboggan slides), on
whose protruding chest the rosette of the Legion pompously squatted.
Numbers five and six had reference to Monsieur, who had seated himself
before I had time to focus my slightly bewildered eyes.

Monsieur spoke sanitary English, as I have said.

“What is your name?”—“Edward E. Cummings.”

—“Your second name?”—“E-s-t-l-i-n,” I spelled it for him.—“How do you
say that?”—I didn’t understand.—“How do you say your name?”—“Oh,” I
said; and pronounced it. He explained in French to the moustache that
my first name was Edouard, my second “A-s-tay-l-ee-n,” and my third
“Kay-umm-ee-n-gay-s”—and the moustache wrote it all down. Monsieur then
turned to me once more:

“You are Irish?”—“No,” I said, “American.”—“You are Irish by
family?”—“No, Scotch.”—“You are sure that there was never an Irishman
in your parents?”—“So far as I know,” I said, “there never was an
Irishman there.”—“Perhaps a hundred years back?” he insisted.—“Not a
chance,” I said decisively. But Monsieur was not to be denied: “Your
name it is Irish?”—“Cummings is a very old Scotch name,” I told him
fluently, “it used to be Comyn. A Scotchman named The Red Comyn was
killed by Robert Bruce in a church. He was my ancestor and a very
well-known man.”—“But your second name, where have you got that?”—“From
an Englishman, a friend of my father.” This statement seemed to produce
a very favorable impression in the case of the rosette, who murmured:
“_Un ami de son père, un Anglais, bon!_” several times. Monsieur, quite
evidently disappointed, told the moustache in French to write down that
I denied my Irish parentage; which the moustache did.

“What does your father in America?”—“He is a minister of the gospel,” I
answered. “Which church?”—“Unitarian.” This puzzled him. After a moment
he had an inspiration: “That is the same as a Free Thinker?”—I
explained in French that it wasn’t and that _mon père_ was a holy man.
At last Monsieur told the moustache to write: Protestant; and the
moustache obediently did so.

From this point on our conversation was carried on in French, somewhat
to the chagrin of Monsieur, but to the joy of the rosette and with the
approval of the moustache. In answer to questions, I informed them that
I was a student for five years at Harvard (expressing great surprise
that they had never heard of Harvard), that I had come to New York and
studied painting, that I had enlisted in New York as _conducteur
volontaire_, embarking for France shortly after, about the middle of
April.

Monsieur asked: “You met B—— on the _paquebot_?” I said I did.

Monsieur glanced significantly around. The rosette nodded a number of
times. The moustache rang.

I understood that these kind people were planning to make me out the
innocent victim of a wily villain, and could not forbear a smile.
_C’est rigolo_, I said to myself; they’ll have a great time doing it.

“You and your friend were together in Paris?” I said “yes.” “How long?”
“A month, while we were waiting for our uniforms.”

A significant look by Monsieur, which is echoed by his _confrères_.

Leaning forward Monsieur asked coldly and carefully: “What did you do
in Paris?” to which I responded briefly and warmly: “We had a good
time.”

This reply pleased the rosette hugely. He wagged his head till I
thought it would have tumbled off. Even the mustache seemed amused.
Monsieur le Ministre de la Sureté de Noyon bit his lip. “Never mind
writing that down,” he directed the lawyer. Then, returning to the
charge:

“You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?”

I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. “Yes, we
certainly did.”

He asked: “Why?”—so I sketched “Lieutenant” A. in vivid terms, making
use of certain choice expressions with which one of the “dirty
Frenchmen” attached to the section, a Parisien, master of argot, had
furnished me. My phraseology surprised my examiners, one of whom (I
think the moustache) observed sarcastically that I had made good use of
my time in Paris.

Monsieur le Ministre asked: Was it true (a) that B. and I were always
together and (b) preferred the company of the attached Frenchmen to
that of our fellow-Americans?—to which I answered in the affirmative.
Why? he wanted to know. So I explained that we felt that the more
French we knew and the better we knew the French the better for us;
expatiating a bit on the necessity for a complete mutual understanding
of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon races if victory was to be won.

Again the rosette nodded with approbation.

Monsieur le Ministre may have felt that he was losing his case, for he
played his trump card immediately: “You are aware that your friend has
written to friends in America and to his family very bad letters.” “I
am not,” I said.

In a flash I understood the motivation of Monsieur’s visit to
_Vingt-et-Un_: the French censor had intercepted some of B.’s letters,
and had notified Mr. A. and Mr. A.’s translator, both of whom had
thankfully testified to the bad character of B. and (wishing very
naturally to get rid of both of us at once) had further averred that we
were always together and that consequently I might properly be regarded
as a suspicious character. Whereupon they had received instructions to
hold us at the section until Noyon could arrive and take charge—hence
our failure to obtain our long-overdue permission.

“Your friend,” said Monsieur in English, “is here a short while ago. I
ask him if he is up in the aeroplane flying over Germans will he drop
the bombs on Germans and he say no, he will not drop any bombs on
Germans.”

By this falsehood (such it happened to be) I confess that I was
nonplussed. In the first place, I was at the time innocent of
third-degree methods. Secondly, I remembered that, a week or so since,
B., myself and another American in the section had written a
letter—which, on the advice of the _sous-lieutenant_ who accompanied
_Vingt-et-Un_ as translator, we had addressed to the Under-Secretary of
State in French Aviation—asking that inasmuch as the American
Government was about to take over the Red Cross (which meant that all
the Sanitary Sections would be affiliated with the American, and no
longer with the French, Army) we three at any rate might be allowed to
continue our association with the French by enlisting in l’Esquadrille
Lafayette. One of the “dirty Frenchmen” had written the letter for us
in the finest language imaginable, from data supplied by ourselves.

“You write a letter, your friend and you, for French aviation?”

Here I corrected him: there were three of us; and why didn’t he have
the third culprit arrested, might I ask? But he ignored this little
digression, and wanted to know: Why not American aviation?—to which I
answered: “Ah, but as my friend has so often said to me, the French are
after all the finest people in the world.”

This double-blow stopped Noyon dead, but only for a second.

“Did your friend write this letter?”—“No,” I answered truthfully.—“Who
did write it?”—“One of the Frenchmen attached to the section.”—“What is
his name?”—“I’m sure I don’t know,” I answered; mentally swearing that,
whatever might happen to me the scribe should not suffer. “At my urgent
request,” I added.

Relapsing into French, Monsieur asked me if I would have any hesitation
in dropping bombs on Germans? I said no, I wouldn’t. And why did I
suppose I was fitted to become aviator? Because, I told him, I weighed
135 pounds and could drive any kind of auto or motorcycle. (I hoped he
would make me prove this assertion, in which case I promised myself
that I wouldn’t stop till I got to Munich; but no.)

“Do you mean to say that my friend was not only trying to avoid serving
in the American Army but was contemplating treason as well?” I asked.

“Well, that would be it, would it not?” he answered coolly. Then,
leaning forward once more, he fired at me: “Why did you write to an
official so high?”

At this I laughed outright. “Because the excellent _sous-lieutenant_
who translated when Mr. Lieutenant A. couldn’t understand advised us to
do so.”

Following up this _sortie_, I addressed the mustache: “Write this down
in the testimony—that I, here present, refuse utterly to believe that
my friend is not as sincere a lover of France and the French people as
any man living!—Tell him to write it,” I commanded Noyon stonily. But
Noyon shook his head, saying: “We have the very best reason for
supposing your friend to be no friend of France.” I answered: “That is
not my affair. I want my opinion of my friend written in; do you see?”
“That’s reasonable,” the rosette murmured; and the moustache wrote it
down.

“Why do you think we volunteered?” I asked sarcastically, when the
testimony was complete.

Monsieur le Ministre was evidently rather uncomfortable. He writhed a
little in his chair, and tweaked his chin three or four times. The
rosette and the moustache were exchanging animated phrases. At last
Noyon, motioning for silence and speaking in an almost desperate tone,
demanded:

“_Est-ce-que vous détestez les boches?_”

I had won my own case. The question was purely perfunctory. To walk out
of the room a free man I had merely to say yes. My examiners were sure
of my answer. The rosette was leaning forward and smiling
encouragingly. The moustache was making little _ouis_ in the air with
his pen. And Noyon had given up all hope of making me out a criminal. I
might be rash, but I was innocent; the dupe of a superior and malign
intelligence. I would probably be admonished to choose my friends more
carefully next time and that would be all….

Deliberately, I framed the answer:

“_Non. J’aime beaucoup les français._”

Agile as a weasel, Monsieur le Ministre was on top of me: “It is
impossible to love Frenchmen and not to hate Germans.”

I did not mind his triumph in the least. The discomfiture of the
rosette merely amused me. The surprise of the moustache I found very
pleasant.

Poor rosette! He kept murmuring desperately: “Fond of his friend, quite
right. Mistaken of course, too bad, meant well.”

With a supremely disagreeable expression on his immaculate face the
victorious minister of security pressed his victim with regained
assurance: “But you are doubtless aware of the atrocities committed by
the boches?”

“I have read about them,” I replied very cheerfully.

“You do not believe?”

“_Ça se peut._”

“And if they are so, which of course they are” (tone of profound
conviction) “you do not detest the Germans?”

“Oh, in that case, of course anyone must detest them,” I averred with
perfect politeness.

And my case was lost, forever lost. I breathed freely once more. All my
nervousness was gone. The attempt of the three gentlemen sitting before
me to endow my friend and myself with different fates had irrevocably
failed.

At the conclusion of a short conference I was told by Monsieur:

“I am sorry for you, but due to your friend you will be detained a
little while.”

I asked: “Several weeks?”

“Possibly,” said Monsieur.

This concluded the trial.

Monsieur le Ministre conducted me into room number 1 again. “Since I
have taken your cigarettes and shall keep them for you, I will give you
some tobacco. Do you prefer English or French?”

Because the French (_paquet bleu_) are stronger and because he expected
me to say English, I said “French.”

With a sorrowful expression Noyon went to a sort of bookcase and took
down a blue packet. I think I asked for matches, or else he had given
back the few which he found on my person.

Noyon, t-d and the grand criminal (alias I) now descended solemnly to
the F.I.A.T. The more and more mystified _conducteur_ conveyed us a
short distance to what was obviously a prison-yard. Monsieur le
Ministre watched me descend my voluminous baggage.

This was carefully examined by Monsieur at the _bureau_, of the prison.
Monsieur made me turn everything topsy-turvy and inside out. Monsieur
expressed great surprise at a huge shell: where did I get it?—I said a
French soldier gave it to me as a souvenir.—And several _têtes
d’obus_?—also souvenirs, I assured him merrily. Did Monsieur suppose I
was caught in the act of blowing up the French Government, or what
exactly?—But here are a dozen sketch-books, what is in them?—Oh,
Monsieur, you flatter me: drawings.—Of fortifications? Hardly; of
poilus, children, and other ruins.—Ummmm. (Monsieur examined the
drawings and found that I had spoken the truth.) Monsieur puts all
these trifles into a small bag, with which I had been furnished (in
addition to the huge duffle-bag) by the generous Red Cross. Labels them
(in French): “Articles found in the baggage of Cummings and deemed
_inutile_ to the case at hand.” This leaves in the duffle-bag
aforesaid: my fur coat, which I brought from New York; my bed and
blankets and bed-roll, my civilian clothes, and about twenty-five
pounds of soiled linen. “You may take the bed-roll and the folding bed
into your cell”—the rest of my _affaires_ would remain in safe keeping
at the _bureau_.

“Come with me,” grimly croaked a lank turnkey creature.

Bed-roll and bed in hand, I came along.

We had but a short distance to go; several steps in fact. I remember we
turned a corner and somehow got sight of a sort of square near the
prison. A military band was executing itself to the stolid delight of
some handfuls of ragged _civiles_. My new captor paused a moment;
perhaps his patriotic soul was stirred. Then we traversed an alley with
locked doors on both sides, and stopped in front of the last door on
the right. A key opened it. The music could still be distinctly heard.

The opened door showed a room, about sixteen feet short and four feet
narrow, with a heap of straw in the further end. My spirits had been
steadily recovering from the banality of their examination; and it was
with a genuine and never-to-be-forgotten thrill that I remarked, as I
crossed what might have been the threshold: “_Mais, on est bien ici_.”

A hideous crash nipped the last word. I had supposed the whole prison
to have been utterly destroyed by earthquake, but it was only my door
closing….




II.
EN ROUTE


I put the bed-roll down. I stood up.

I was myself.

An uncontrollable joy gutted me after three months of humiliation, of
being bossed and herded and bullied and insulted. I was myself and my
own master.

In this delirium of relief (hardly noticing what I did) I inspected the
pile of straw, decided against it, set up my bed, disposed the roll on
it, and began to examine my cell.

I have mentioned the length and breadth. The cell was ridiculously
high; perhaps ten feet. The end with the door in it was peculiar. The
door was not placed in the middle of this end, but at one side,
allowing for a huge iron can waist-high which stood in the other
corner. Over the door and across the end, a grating extended. A slit of
sky was always visible.

Whistling joyously to myself, I took three steps which brought me to
the door-end. The door was massively made, all of iron or steel I
should think. It delighted me. The can excited my curiosity. I looked
over the edge of it. At the bottom reposefully lay a new human turd.

I have a sneaking mania for wood-cuts, particularly when used to
illustrate the indispensable psychological crisis of some outworn
romance. There is in my possession at this minute a masterful depiction
of a tall, bearded, horrified man who, clad in an anonymous rig of goat
skins, with a fantastic umbrella clasped weakly in one huge paw, bends
to examine an indication of humanity in the somewhat cubist wilderness
whereof he had fancied himself the owner….

It was then that I noticed the walls. Arm-high they were covered with
designs, mottos, pictures. The drawing had all been done in pencil. I
resolved to ask for a pencil at the first opportunity.

There had been Germans and Frenchmen imprisoned in this cell. On the
right wall, near the door-end, was a long selection from Goethe,
laboriously copied. Near the other end of this wall a satiric landscape
took place. The technique of this landscape frightened me. There were
houses, men, children. And there were trees. I began to wonder what a
tree looks like, and laughed copiously.

The back wall had a large and exquisite portrait of a German officer.

The left wall was adorned with a yacht, flying a number 13. “My beloved
boat” was inscribed in German underneath. Then came a bust of a German
soldier, very idealized, full of unfear. After this, a masterful
crudity—a doughnut-bodied rider, sliding with fearful rapidity down the
acute backbone of a totally transparent sausage-shaped horse, who was
moving simultaneously in five directions. The rider had a bored
expression as he supported the stiff reins in one fist. His further leg
assisted in his flight. He wore a German soldier’s cap and was smoking.
I made up my mind to copy the horse and rider at once, so soon, that
is, as I should have obtained a pencil.

Last, I found a drawing surrounded by a scrolled motto. The drawing was
a potted plant with four blossoms. The four blossoms were elaborately
dead. Their death was drawn with a fearful care. An obscure
deliberation was exposed in the depiction of their drooping petals. The
pot tottered very crookedly on a sort of table, as near as I could see.
All around ran a funereal scroll. I read: “My farewell to my beloved
wife, Gaby.” A fierce hand, totally distinct from the former, wrote in
proud letters above: “Punished for desertion. Six years of
prison—military degradation.”

It must have been five o’clock. Steps. A vast cluttering of the
exterior of the door—by whom? Whang opens the door. Turnkey-creature
extending a piece of chocolate with extreme and surly caution. I say
“_Merci_” and seize chocolate. Klang shuts the door.

I am lying on my back, the twilight does mistily bluish miracles
through the slit over the whang-klang. I can just see leaves, meaning
tree.

Then from the left and way off, faintly, broke a smooth whistle, cool
like a peeled willow-branch, and I found myself listening to an air
from Petroushka, Petroushka, which we saw in Paris at the _Châtelet,
mon ami et moi_….

The voice stopped in the middle—and I finished the air. This code
continued for a half-hour.

It was dark.

I had laid a piece of my piece of chocolate on the window-sill. As I
lay on my back a little silhouette came along the sill and ate that
piece of a piece, taking something like four minutes to do so. He then
looked at me, I then smiled at him, and we parted, each happier than
before.

My _cellule_ was cool, and I fell asleep easily.

(Thinking of Paris.)

… Awakened by a conversation whose vibrations I clearly felt through
the left wall:

Turnkey-creature: “What?”

A moldly moldering molish voice, suggesting putrefying tracts and
orifices, answers with a cob-webbish patience so far beyond despair as
to be indescribable: “_La soupe_.”

“Well, the soup, I just gave it to you, Monsieur Savy.”

“Must have a little something else. My money is _chez le directeur_.
Please take my money which is _chez le directeur_ and give me anything
else.”

“All right, the next time I come to see you to-day I’ll bring you a
salad, a nice salad, Monsieur.”

“Thank you, Monsieur,” the voice moldered.

Klang!!—and says the turnkey-creature to somebody else; while turning
the lock of Monsieur Savy’s door; taking pains to raise his voice so
that Monsieur Savy will not miss a single word through the slit over
Monsieur Savy’s whang-klang:

“That old fool! Always asks for things. When supposest thou will he
realize that he’s never going to get anything?”

Grubbing at my door. Whang!

The faces stood in the doorway, looking me down. The expression of the
faces identically turnkeyish, i.e., stupidly gloating, ponderously and
imperturbably tickled. Look who’s here, who let that in?

The right body collapsed sufficiently to deposit a bowl just inside.

I smiled and said: “Good morning, sirs. The can stinks.”

They did not smile and said: “Naturally.” I smiled and said: “Please
give me a pencil. I want to pass the time.” They did not smile and
said: “Directly.”

I smiled and said: “I want some water, if you please.”

They shut the door, saying “Later.”

Klang and footsteps.

I contemplate the bowl which contemplates me. A glaze of greenish
grease seals the mystery of its content, I induce two fingers to
penetrate the seal. They bring me up a flat sliver of cabbage and a
large, hard, thoughtful, solemn, uncooked bean. To pour the water off
(it is warmish and sticky) without committing a nuisance is to lift the
cover off _Ça Pue_. I did.

Thus leaving beans and cabbage-slivers. Which I ate hurryingly, fearing
a ventral misgiving.

I pass a lot of time cursing myself about the pencil, looking at my
walls, my unique interior.

Suddenly I realize the indisputable grip of nature’s humorous hand. One
evidently stands on _Ça Pue_ in such cases. Having finished, panting
with stink, I tumble on the bed and consider my next move.

The straw will do. Ouch, but it’s Dirty.—Several hours elapse….

Steps and fumble. Klang. Repetition of promise to Monsieur Savy, etc.

Turnkeyish and turnkeyish. Identical expression. One body collapses
sufficiently to deposit a hunk of bread and a piece of water.

“Give your bowl.”

I gave it, smiled and said: “Well, how about that pencil?”

“Pencil?” T-c looked at T-c.

They recited then the following word: “To-morrow.” Klang and footsteps.

So I took matches, burnt, and with just 60 of them wrote the first
stanza of a ballade. To-morrow I will write the second. Day after
to-morrow the third. Next day the refrain. After—oh, well.

My whistling of Petroushka brought no response this evening.

So I climbed on _Ça Pue_, whom I now regarded with complete
friendliness; the new moon was unclosing sticky wings in dusk, a far
noise from near things.

I sang a song the “dirty Frenchmen” taught us, _mon ami et moi_. The
song says _Bon soir, Madame de la Lune_…. I did not sing out loud,
simply because the moon was like a mademoiselle, and I did not want to
offend the moon. My friends: the silhouette and _la lune_, not counting
_Ça Pue_, whom I regarded almost as a part of me.

Then I lay down, and heard (but could not see the silhouette eat
something or somebody) … and saw, but could not hear, the incense of
_Ça Pue_ mount gingerly upon the taking air of twilight.

The next day.—Promise to M. Savy. Whang. “My pencil?”—“You don’t need
any pencil, you’re going away.”—“When?”—“Directly.”—“How directly?”—“In
an hour or two: your friend has already gone before. Get ready.”

Klang and steps.

Everyone very sore about me. I should worry, however.

One hour, I guess.

Steps. Sudden throwing of door open. Pause.

“Come out, American.”

As I came out, toting bed and bed-roll, I remarked: “I’m sorry to leave
you,” which made T-c furiously to masticate his insignificant
moustache.

Escorted to _bureau_, where I am turned over to a very fat _gendarme_.

“This is the American.” The v-f-g eyed me, and I read my sins in his
porklike orbs. “Hurry, we have to walk,” he ventured sullenly and
commandingly.

Himself stooped puffingly to pick up the segregated sack. And I placed
my bed, bed-roll, blankets and ample _pelisse_ under one arm, my
150-odd pound duffle-bag under the other; then I paused. Then I said,
“Where’s my cane?”

The v-f-g hereat had a sort of fit, which perfectly became him.

I repeated gently: “When I came to the _bureau_ I had a cane.”

“I don’t give a damn about your cane,” burbled my new captor frothily,
his pink evil eyes swelling with wrath.

“I’m staying,” I replied calmly, and sat down on a curb, in the midst
of my ponderous trinkets.

A crowd of _gendarmes_ gathered. One didn’t take a cane with one to
prison (I was glad to know where I was bound, and thanked this
communicative gentleman); or criminals weren’t allowed canes; or where
exactly did I think I was, in the Tuileries? asks a rube movie-cop
personage.

“Very well, gentlemen,” I said. “You will allow me to tell you
something.” (I was beet-colored.) “In America that sort of thing isn’t
done.”

This haughty inaccuracy produced an astonishing effect, namely, the
prestidigitatorial vanishment of the v-f-g. The v-f-g’s numerous
_confrères_ looked scared and twirled their whiskers.

I sat on the curb and began to fill a paper with something which I
found in my pockets, certainly not tobacco.

Splutter-splutter-fizz-Poop—the v-f-g is back, with my oak-branch in
his raised hand, slithering opprobria and mostly crying: “Is that huge
piece of wood what you call a cane? It is, is it? What? How? What
the—,” so on.

I beamed upon him and thanked him, and explained that a “dirty
Frenchman” had given it to me as a souvenir, and that I would now
proceed.

Twisting the handle in the loop of my sack, and hoisting the vast
parcel under my arm, I essayed twice to boost it on my back. This to
the accompaniment of HurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurry…. The third
time I sweated and staggered to my feet, completely accoutred.

Down the road. Into the _ville_. Curious looks from a few pedestrians.
A driver stops his wagon to watch the spider and his outlandish fly. I
chuckled to think how long since I had washed and shaved. Then I nearly
fell, staggered on a few steps, and set down the two loads.

Perhaps it was the fault of a strictly vegetarian diet. At any rate, I
couldn’t move a step farther with my bundles. The sun sent the sweat
along my nose in tickling waves. My eyes were blind.

Hereupon I suggested that the v-f-g carry part of one of my bundles
with me, and received the answer: “I am doing too much for you as it
is. No _gendarme_ is supposed to carry a prisoner’s baggage.”

I said then: “I’m too tired.”

He responded: “You can leave here anything you don’t care to carry
further; I’ll take care of it.”

I looked at the _gendarme_. I looked several blocks through him. My lip
did something like a sneer. My hands did something like fists.

At this crisis along comes a little boy. May God bless all males
between seven and ten years of age in France!

The _gendarme_ offered a suggestion, in these words: “Have you any
change about you?” He knew, of course, that the sanitary official’s
first act had been to deprive me of every last cent. The _gendarme’s_
eyes were fine. They reminded me of … never mind. “If you have change,”
said he, “you might hire this kid to carry some of your baggage.” Then
he lit a pipe which was made in his own image, and smiled fattily.

But herein the v-f-g had bust his milk-jug. There is a slit of a pocket
made in the uniform of his criminal on the right side, and completely
covered by the belt which his criminal always wears. His criminal had
thus outwitted the gumshoe fraternity.

The _gosse_ could scarcely balance my smaller parcel, but managed after
three rests to get it to the station platform; here I tipped him
something like two cents (all I had) which, with dollar-big eyes, he
took and ran.

A strongly-built, groomed _apache_ smelling of cologne and onions
greeted my v-f-g with that affection which is peculiar to _gendarmes_.
On me he stared cynically, then sneered frankly.

With a little tooty shriek the funny train tottered in. My captors had
taken pains to place themselves at the wrong end of the platform. Now
they encouraged me to HurryHurryHurry.

I managed to get under the load and tottered the length of the train to
a car especially reserved. There was one other criminal, a
beautifully-smiling, shortish man, with a very fine blanket wrapped in
a water-proof oilskin cover. We grinned at each other (the most cordial
salutation, by the way, that I have ever exchanged with a human being)
and sat down opposite one another—he, plus my baggage which he helped
me lift in, occupying one seat; the _gendarme_-sandwich, of which I
formed the _pièce de résistance_, the other.

The engine got under way after several feints; which pleased the
Germans so that they sent several scout planes right over the station,
train, us _et tout_. All the French anticraft guns went off together
for the sake of sympathy; the guardians of the peace squinted
cautiously from their respective windows, and then began a debate on
the number of the enemy while their prisoners smiled at each other
appreciatively.

“_Il fait chaud_,” said this divine man, prisoner, criminal, or what
not, as he offered me a glass of wine in the form of a huge tin cup
overflowed from the canteen in his slightly unsteady and delicately
made hand. He is a Belgian. Volunteered at beginning of war. Permission
at Paris, overstayed by one day. When he reported to his officer, the
latter announced that he was a deserter—I said to him, “It is funny. It
is funny I should have come back, of my own free will, to my company. I
should have thought that being a deserter I would have preferred to
remain in Paris.” The wine was terribly cold, and I thanked my divine
host.

Never have I tasted such wine.

They had given me a chunk of war-bread in place of blessing when I left
Noyon. I bit into it with renewed might. But the divine man across from
me immediately produced a sausage, half of which he laid simply upon my
knee. The halving was done with a large keen poilu’s knife.

I have not tasted a sausage since.

The pigs on my either hand had by this time overcome their respective
inertias and were chomping cheek-murdering chunks. They had quite a
layout, a regular picnic-lunch elaborate enough for kings or even
presidents. The v-f-g in particular annoyed me by uttering alternate
chompings and belchings. All the time he ate he kept his eyes
half-shut; and a mist overspread the sensual meadows of his coarse
face.

His two reddish eyes rolled devouringly toward the blanket in its
waterproof roll. After a huge gulp of wine he said thickly (for his
huge moustache was crusted with saliva-tinted half-moistened shreds of
food), “You will have no use for that _machine là-bas_. They are going
to take everything away from you when you get there, you know. I could
use it nicely. I have wanted such a piece of rubber for a great while,
in order to make me a raincoat. Do you see?” (Gulp. Swallow.)

Here I had an inspiration. I would save the blanket-cover by drawing
these brigands’ attention to myself. At the same time I would satisfy
my inborn taste for the ridiculous. “Have you a pencil?” I said.
“Because I am an artist in my own country, and will do your picture.”

He gave me a pencil. I don’t remember where the paper came from. I
posed him in a pig-like position, and the picture made him chew his
moustache. The apache thought it very droll. I should do his picture,
too, at once. I did my best; though protesting that he was too
beautiful for my pencil, which remark he countered by murmuring (as he
screwed his moustache another notch), “Never mind, you will try.” Oh,
yes, I would try all right, all right. He objected, I recall, to the
nose.

By this time the divine “deserter” was writhing with joy. “If you
please, Monsieur,” he whispered radiantly, “it would be too great an
honor, but if you could—I should be overcome….”

Tears (for some strange reason) came into my eyes.

He handled his picture sacredly, criticised it with precision and care,
finally bestowed it in his inner pocket. Then we drank. It happened
that the train stopped and the _apache_ was persuaded to go out and get
his prisoner’s canteen filled. Then we drank again.

He smiled as he told me he was getting ten years. Three years at
solitary confinement was it, and seven working in a gang on the road?
That would not be so bad. He wished he was not married, had not a
little child. “The bachelors are lucky in this war”—he smiled.

Now the gendarmes began cleaning their beards, brushing their stomachs,
spreading their legs, collecting their baggage. The reddish eyes,
little and cruel, woke from the trance of digestion and settled with
positive ferocity on their prey. “You will have no use….”

Silently the sensitive, gentle hands of the divine prisoner undid the
blanket-cover. Silently the long, tired, well-shaped arms passed it
across to the brigand at my left side. With a grunt of satisfaction the
brigand stuffed it in a large pouch, taking pains that it should not
show. Silently the divine eyes said to mine: “What can we do, we
criminals?” And we smiled at each other for the last time, the eyes and
my eyes.

A station. The _apache_ descends. I follow with my numerous _affaires_.
The divine man follows me—the v-f-g him.

The blanket-roll containing my large fur-coat got more and more
unrolled; finally I could not possibly hold it.

It fell. To pick it up I must take the sack off my back.

Then comes a voice, “allow me if you please, monsieur”—and the sack has
disappeared. Blindly and dumbly I stumble on with the roll; and so at
length we come into the yard of a little prison; and the divine man
bowed under my great sack…. I never thanked him. When I turned, they’d
taken him away, and the sack stood accusingly at my feet.

Through the complete disorder of my numbed mind flicker jabbings of
strange tongues. Some high boy’s voice is appealing to me in Belgian,
Italian, Polish, Spanish and—beautiful English. “Hey, Jack, give me a
cigarette, Jack….”

I lift my eyes. I am standing in a tiny oblong space. A sort of court.
All around, two-story wooden barracks. Little crude staircases lead up
to doors heavily chained and immensely padlocked. More like ladders
than stairs. Curious hewn windows, smaller in proportion than the slits
in a doll’s house. Are these faces behind the slits? The doors bulge
incessantly under the shock of bodies hurled against them from within.
The whole dirty _nouveau_ business about to crumble.

Glance one.

Glance two: directly before me. A wall with many bars fixed across one
minute opening. At the opening a dozen, fifteen, grins. Upon the bars
hands, scraggy and bluishly white. Through the bars stretching of lean
arms, incessant stretchings. The grins leap at the window, hands
belonging to them catch hold, arms belonging to the hands stretch in my
direction … an instant; the new grins leap from behind and knock off
the first grins which go down with a fragile crashing like glass
smashed: hands wither and break, arms streak out of sight, sucked
inward.

In the huge potpourri of misery a central figure clung, shaken but
undislodged. Clung like a monkey to central bars. Clung like an angel
to a harp. Calling pleasantly in a high boyish voice: “O Jack, give me
a cigarette.”

A handsome face, dark, Latin smile, musical fingers strong.

I waded suddenly through a group of gendarmes (they stood around me
watching with a disagreeable curiosity my reaction to this). Strode
fiercely to the window.

Trillions of hands.

Quadrillions of itching fingers.

The angel-monkey received the package of cigarettes politely,
disappearing with it into howling darkness. I heard his high boy’s
voice distributing cigarettes. Then he leaped into sight, poised
gracefully against two central bars, saying “Thank you, Jack, good boy”
… “Thanks, _merci_, _gracias_…” a deafening din of gratitude reeked
from within.

“Put your baggage in here,” quoth an angry voice. “No, you will not
take anything but one blanket in your cell, understand.” In French.
Evidently the head of the house speaking. I obeyed. A corpulent soldier
importantly lead me to my cell. My cell is two doors away from the
monkey-angel, on the same side. The high boy-voice, centralized in a
torrent-like halo of stretchings, followed my back. The head himself
unlocked a lock. I marched coldly in. The fat soldier locked and
chained my door. Four feet went away. I felt in my pocket, finding four
cigarettes. I am sorry I did not give these also to the monkey—to the
angel. Lifted my eyes and saw my own harp.




III.
A PILGRIM’S PROGRESS


Through the bars I looked into that little and dirty lane whereby I had
entered; in which a sentinel, gun on shoulder, and with a huge revolver
strapped at his hip, monotonously moved. On my right was an old wall
overwhelmed with moss. A few growths stemmed from its crevices. Their
leaves were of a refreshing colour. I felt singularly happy, and
carefully throwing myself on the bare planks sang one after another all
the French songs which I had picked up in my stay at the ambulance;
sang La Madelon, sang AVec avEC DU, and Les Galiots Sont Lourds Dans
Sac—concluding with an inspired rendering of La Marseillaise, at which
the guard (who had several times stopped his round in what I choose to
interpret as astonishment) grounded arms and swore appreciatively.
Various officials of the jail passed by me and my lusty songs; I cared
no whit. Two or three conferred, pointing in my direction, and I sang a
little louder for the benefit of their perplexity. Finally out of voice
I stopped.

It was twilight.

As I lay on my back luxuriously, I saw through the bars of my twice
padlocked door a boy and a girl about ten years old. I saw them climb
on the wall and play together, obliviously and exquisitely, in the
darkening air. I watched them for many minutes; till the last moment of
light failed; till they and the wall itself dissolved in a common
mystery, leaving only the bored silhouette of the soldier moving
imperceptibly and wearily against a still more gloomy piece of autumn
sky.

At last I knew that I was very thirsty; and leaping up began to clamor
at my bars. “Something to drink, please.” After a long debate with the
sergeant of guards who said very angrily: “Give it to him,” a guard
took my request and disappeared from view, returning with a more
heavily armed guard and a tin cup full of water. One of these gentry
watched the water and me, while the other wrestled with the padlock.
The door being minutely opened, one guard and the water painfully
entered. The other guard remained at the door, gun in readiness. The
water was set down, and the enterer assumed a perpendicular position
which I thought merited recognition; accordingly I said “_Merci_”
politely, without getting up from the planks. Immediately he began to
deliver a sharp lecture on the probability of my using the tin cup to
saw my way out; and commended haste in no doubtful terms. I smiled,
asked pardon for my inherent stupidity (which speech seemed to anger
him) and guzzled the so-called water without looking at it, having
learned something from Noyon. With a long and dangerous look at their
prisoner, the gentlemen of the guard withdrew, using inconceivable
caution in the relocking of the door.

I laughed and fell asleep.

After (as I judged) four minutes of slumber, I was awakened by at least
six men standing over me. The darkness was intense, it was
extraordinarily cold. I glared at them and tried to understand what new
crime I had committed. One of the six was repeating: “Get up, you are
going away. Four o’clock.” After several attempts I got up. They formed
a circle around me; and together we marched a few steps to a sort of
storeroom, where my great sack, small sack, and overcoat were handed to
me. A rather agreeably voiced guard then handed me a half-cake of
chocolate, saying (but with a tolerable grimness): “You’ll need it,
believe me.” I found my stick, at which “piece of furniture” they
amused themselves a little until I showed its use, by catching the ring
at the mouth of my sack in the curved end of the stick and swinging the
whole business unaided on my back. Two new guards—or rather
_gendarmes_—were now officially put in charge of my person; and the
three of us passed down the lane, much to the interest of the sentinel,
to whom I bade a vivid and unreturned adieu. I can see him perfectly as
he stares stupidly at us, a queer shape in the gloom, before turning on
his heel.

Toward the very station whereat some hours since I had disembarked with
the Belgian deserter and my former escorts, we moved. I was stiff with
cold and only half awake, but peculiarly thrilled. The gendarmes on
either side moved grimly, without speaking; or returning monosyllables
to my few questions. Yes, we were to take the train. I was going
somewhere, then? “_B’en sûr._”—“Where?”—“You will know in time.”

After a few minutes we reached the station, which I failed to
recognize. The yellow flares of lamps, huge and formless in the night
mist, some figures moving to and fro on a little platform, a rustle of
conversation: everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully
abnormal, deliciously insane. Every figure was wrapped with its
individual ghostliness; a number of ghosts each out on his own
promenade, yet each for some reason selecting this unearthly patch of
the world, this putrescent and uneasy gloom. Even my guards talked in
whispers. “Watch him, I’ll see about the train.” So one went off into
the mist. I leaned dizzily against the wall nearest me (having plumped
down my baggage) and stared into the darkness at my elbow, filled with
talking shadows. I recognized _officiers anglais_ wandering helplessly
up and down, supported with their sticks; French lieutenants talking to
each other here and there; the extraordinary sense-bereft station
master at a distance looking like a cross between a jumping-jack and a
goblin; knots of _permissionnaires_ cursing wearily or joking
hopelessly with one another or stalking back and forth with imprecatory
gesticulations. “It’s a joke, too, you know, there are no more
trains?”—“The conductor is dead. I know his sister.”—“Old chap, I am
all in.”—“Say, we are all lost.”—“What time is it?”—“My dear fellow,
there is no more time, the French Government forbids it.” Suddenly
burst out of the loquacious opacity a dozen handfuls of Algériens,
their feet swaggering with fatigue, their eyes burning, apparently by
themselves—faceless in the equally black mist. By threes and fives they
assaulted the goblin who wailed and shook his withered fist in their
faces. There was no train. It had been taken away by the French
Government. “How do I know how the poilus can get back to their
regiments on time? Of course you’ll all of you be deserters, but is it
my fault?” (I thought of my friend, the Belgian, at this moment lying
in a pen at the prison which I had just quitted by some miracle.) … One
of these fine people from uncivilized, ignorant, unwarlike Algeria was
drunk and knew it, as did two of his very fine friends who announced
that as there was no train he should have a good sleep at a farmhouse
hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to espy through the
impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted into the dark,
his friends’ abrupt steps correcting his own large slovenly procedure
out of earshot…. Some of the Black People sat down near me and smoked.
Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned with fatigue.
Their vast gentle hands lay noisily about their knees.

The departed _gendarme_ returned, with a bump, out of the mist. The
train for Paris would arrive _de suite_. We were just in time, our
movement had so far been very creditable. All was well. It was cold,
eh?

Then with the ghastly miniature roar of an insane toy the train for
Paris came fumbling into the station….

We boarded it, due caution being taken that I should not escape. As a
matter of fact I held up the would-be passengers for nearly a minute by
my unaided attempts to boost my uncouth baggage aboard. Then my captors
and I blundered heavily into a compartment in which an Englishman and
two French women were seated. My _gendarmes_ established themselves on
either side of the door, a process which woke up the Anglo-Saxon and
caused a brief gap in the low talk of the women. Jolt—we were off.

I find myself with a _française_ on my left and an _anglais_ on my
right. The latter has already uncomprehendingly subsided into sleep.
The former (a woman of about thirty) is talking pleasantly to her
friend, whom I face. She must have been very pretty before she put on
the black. Her friend is also a _veuve_. How pleasantly they talk, of
_la guerre_, of Paris, of the bad service; talk in agreeably modulated
voices, leaning a little forward to each other, not wishing to disturb
the dolt at my right. The train tears slowly on. Both the _gendarmes_
are asleep, one with his hand automatically grasping the handle of the
door. Lest I escape. I try all sorts of positions, for I find myself
very tired. The best is to put my cane between my legs and rest my chin
on it; but even that is uncomfortable, for the Englishman has writhed
all over me by this time and is snoring creditably. I look him over; an
Etonian, as I guess. Certain well-bred-well-fedness. Except for the
position—well, _c’est la guerre_. The women are speaking softly. “And
do you know, my dear, that they had raids again in Paris? My sister
wrote me.”—“One has excitement always in a great city, my dear.”—

Bump, slowing down. BUMP—BUMP.

It is light outside. One sees the world. There is a world still, the
_gouvernement français_ has not taken it away, and the air must be
beautifully cool. In the compartment it is hot. The _gendarmes_ smell
worst. I know how I smell. What polite women.

“_Enfin, nous voilà._” My guards awoke and yawned pretentiously. Lest I
should think they had dozed off. It is Paris.

Some _permissionaires_ cried “Paris.” The woman across from me said
“Paris, Paris.” A great shout came up from every insane drowsy brain
that had travelled with us—a fierce and beautiful cry, which went the
length of the train…. Paris, where one forgets, Paris, which is
Pleasure, Paris, in whom our souls live, Paris, the beautiful, Paris at
last.

The Englishman woke up and said heavily to me: “I say, where are
we?”—“Paris,” I answered, walking carefully on his feet as I made my
baggage-laden way out of the compartment. It was Paris.

My guards hurried me through the station. One of them (I saw for the
first time) was older than the other, and rather handsome with his Van
Dyck blackness of curly beard. He said that it was too early for the
_metro_, it was closed. We should take a car. It would bring us to the
other station from which our next train left. We should hurry. We
emerged from the station and its crowds of crazy men. We boarded a car
marked something. The conductress, a strong, pink-cheeked, rather
beautiful girl in black, pulled my baggage in for me with a gesture
which filled all of me with joy. I thanked her, and she smiled at me.
The car moved along through the morning.

We descended from it. We started off on foot. The car was not the right
car. We would have to walk to the station. I was faint and almost dead
from weariness and I stopped when my overcoat had fallen from my
benumbed arm for the second time: “How far is it?” The older _gendarme_
returned briefly, “Twenty minutes.” I said to him: “Will you help me
carry these things?” He thought, and told the younger to carry my small
sack filled with papers. The latter grunted, “_C’est défendu._” We went
a little farther, and I broke down again. I stopped dead, and said: “I
can’t go any farther.” It was obvious to my escorts that I couldn’t, so
I didn’t trouble to elucidate. Moreover, I was past elucidation.

The older stroked his beard. “Well,” he said, “would you care to take a
cab?” I merely looked at him. “If you wish to call a cab, I will take
out of your money, which I have here and which I must not give to you,
the necessary sum, and make a note of it, subtracting from the original
amount a sufficiency for our fare to the Gare. In that case we will not
walk to the Gare, we will in fact ride.” “Please,” was all I found to
reply to this eloquence.

Several empty cabs had gone by during the peroration of the law, and no
more seemed to offer themselves. After some minutes, however, one
appeared and was duly hailed. Nervously (he was shy in the big city)
the older asked if the driver knew where the Gare was. “_Laquelle?_”
demanded the _cocher_ angrily. And when he was told—“Of course, I know,
why not?” We got in; I being directed to sit in the middle, and my two
bags and fur coat piled on top of us all.

So we drove through the streets in the freshness of the full morning,
the streets full of a few divine people who stared at me and nudged one
another, the streets of Paris … the drowsy ways wakening at the horses’
hoofs, the people lifting their faces to stare.

We arrived at the Gare, and I recognized it vaguely. Was it D’Orléans?
We dismounted, and the tremendous transaction of the fare was
apparently very creditably accomplished by the older. The _cocher_ gave
me a look and remarked whatever it is Paris drivers remark to Paris cab
horses, pulling dully at the reins. We entered the station and I
collapsed comfortably on a bench; the younger, seating himself with
enormous pomposity at my side, adjusted his tunic with a purely
feminine gesture expressive at once of pride and nervousness. Gradually
my vision gained in focus. The station has a good many people in it.
The number increases momently. A great many are girls. I am in a new
world—a world of _chic_ femininity. My eyes devour the inimitable
details of costume, the inexpressible nuances of pose, the
indescribable _démarche_ of the _midinette_. They hold themselves
differently. They have even a little bold color here and there on skirt
or blouse or hat. They are not talking about La Guerre. Incredible.
They appear very beautiful, these Parisiennes.

And simultaneously with my appreciation of the crisp persons about me
comes the hitherto unacknowledged appreciation of my uncouthness. My
chin tells my hand of a good quarter inch of beard, every hair of it
stiff with dirt. I can feel the dirt-pools under my eyes. My hands are
rough with dirt. My uniform is smeared and creased in a hundred
thousand directions. My puttees and shoes are prehistoric in
appearance….

My first request was permission to visit the _vespasienne_. The younger
didn’t wish to assume any unnecessary responsibilities; I should wait
till the older returned. There he was now. I might ask him. The older
benignly granted my petition, nodding significantly to his
fellow-guard, by whom I was accordingly escorted to my destination and
subsequently back to my bench. When we got back the _gendarmes_ held a
consultation of terrific importance; in substance, the train which
should be leaving at that moment (six something) did not run to-day. We
should therefore wait for the next train, which leaves at
twelve-something-else. Then the older surveyed me and said almost
kindly: “How would you like a cup of coffee?”—“Much,” I replied
sincerely enough.—“Come with me,” he commanded, resuming instantly his
official manner. “And you” (to the younger) “watch his baggage.”

Of all the very beautiful women whom I had seen the most very beautiful
was the large and circular lady who sold a cup of perfectly hot and
genuine coffee for two cents, just on the brink of the station,
chatting cheerfully with her many customers. Of all the drinks I ever
drank, hers was the most sacredly delicious. She wore, I remember, a
tight black dress in which enormous and benignant breasts bulged and
sank continuously. I lingered over my tiny cup, watching her swift big
hands, her round nodding face, her large sudden smile. I drank two
coffees, and insisted that my money should pay for our drinks. Of all
the treating which I shall ever do, the treating of my captor will
stand unique in pleasure. Even he half appreciated the sense of humor
involved; though his dignity did not permit a visible acknowledgment
thereof.

_Madame la vendeuse de café_, I shall remember you for more than a
little while.

Having thus consummated breakfast, my guardian suggested a walk.
Agreed. I felt I had the strength of ten because the coffee was pure.
Moreover it would be a novelty to _me promener sans_ 150-odd pounds of
baggage. We set out.

As we walked easily and leisurely the by this time well peopled streets
of the vicinity, my guard indulged himself in pleasant conversation.
Did I know Paris much? He knew it all. But he had not been in Paris for
several (eight was it?) years. It was a fine place, a large city to be
sure. But always changing. I had spent a month in Paris while waiting
for my uniform and my assignment to a _section sanitaire_? And my
friend was with me? H-mmm-mm.

A perfectly typical runt of a Paris bull eyed us. The older saluted him
with infinite respect, the respect of a shabby rube deacon for a
well-dressed burglar. They exchanged a few well-chosen words, in French
of course. “What ya got there?”—“An American.”—“What’s wrong with
him?”—“H-mmm” mysterious shrug of the shoulders followed by a whisper
in the ear of the city thug. The latter contented himself with
“Ha-aaa”—plus a look at me which was meant to wipe me off the earth’s
face (I pretended to be studying the morning meanwhile). Then we moved
on, followed by ferocious stares from the Paris bull. Evidently I was
getting to be more of a criminal every minute; I should probably be
shot to-morrow, not (as I had assumed erroneously) the day after. I
drank the morning with renewed vigor, thanking heaven for the coffee,
Paris; and feeling complete confidence in myself. I should make a great
speech (in Midi French). I should say to the firing squad: “Gentlemen,
_c’est de la blague, tu sais? Moi, je connais la soeur du conducteur._”
… They would ask me when I preferred to die. I should reply, “Pardon
me, you wish to ask me when I prefer to become immortal?” I should
answer: “What matter? It’s all the same to me, because there isn’t any
more time—the French Government forbids it.”

My laughter surprised the older considerably. He would have been more
astonished had I yielded to the well-nigh irrepressible inclination,
which at the moment suffused me, to clap him heartily upon the back.

Everything was _blague_. The driver, the café, the police, the morning,
and least and last the excellent French Government.

We had walked for a half hour or more. My guide and protector now
inquired of a workingman the location of the _boucheries_? “There is
one right in front of you,” he was told. Sure enough, not a block away.
I laughed again. It was eight years all right.

The older bought a great many things in the next five minutes: sausage,
cheese, bread, chocolate, _pinard rouge_. A _bourgeoise_ with an
unagreeable face and suspicion of me written in headlines all over her
mouth served us with quick hard laconicisms of movement. I hated her
and consequently refused my captor’s advice to buy a little of
everything (on the ground that it would be a long time till the next
meal), contenting myself with a cake of chocolate—rather bad chocolate,
but nothing to what I was due to eat during the next three months. Then
we retraced our steps, arriving at the station after several mistakes
and inquiries, to find the younger faithfully keeping guard over my two
_sacs_ and overcoat.

The older and I sat down, and the younger took his turn at promenading.
I got up to buy a Fantasio at the stand ten steps away, and the older
jumped up and escorted me to and from it. I think I asked him what he
would read? and he said “Nothing.” Maybe I bought him a journal. So we
waited, eyed by everyone in the Gare, laughed at by the officers and
their _marraines_, pointed at by sinewy dames and decrepit
_bonhommes_—the centre of amusement for the whole station. In spite of
my reading I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Would it never be Twelve?
Here comes the younger, neat as a pin, looking fairly sterilized. He
sits down on my left. Watches are ostentatiously consulted. It is time.
_En avant._ I sling myself under my bags.

“Where are we going now?” I asked the older. Curling the tips of his
mustachios, he replied, “Mah-say.”

Marseilles! I was happy once more. I had always wanted to go to that
great port of the Mediterranean, where one has new colors and strange
customs, and where the people sing when they talk. But how
extraordinary to have come to Paris—and what a trip lay before us. I
was much muddled about the whole thing. Probably I was to be deported.
But why from Marseilles? Where was Marseilles anyway? I was probably
all wrong about its location. Who cared, after all? At least we were
leaving the pointings and the sneers and the half-suppressed titters….

Two fat and respectable _bonhommes_, the two _gendarmes_, and I, made
up one compartment. The former talked an animated stream, the guards
and I were on the whole silent. I watched the liquidating landscape and
dozed happily. The _gendarmes_ dozed, one at each door. The train
rushed lazily across the earth, between farmhouses, into fields, along
woods … the sunlight smacked my eye and cuffed my sleepy mind with
colour.

I was awakened by a noise of eating. My protectors, knife in hand, were
consuming their meat and bread, occasionally tilting their _bidons_ on
high and absorbing the thin streams which spurted therefrom. I tried a
little chocolate. The _bonhommes_ were already busy with their repast.
The older gendarme watched me chewing away at the chocolate, then
commanded, “Take some bread.” This astonished me, I confessed, beyond
anything which had heretofore occurred. I gazed mutely at him,
wondering whether the _gouvernement français_ had made away with his
wits. He had relaxed amazingly: his cap lay beside him, his tunic was
unbuttoned, he slouched in a completely undisciplined posture—his face
seemed to have been changed for a peasant’s, it was almost open in
expression and almost completely at ease. I seized the offered hunk,
and chewed vigorously on it. Bread was bread. The older appeared
pleased with my appetite; his face softened still more, as he remarked:
“Bread without wine doesn’t taste good,” and proffered his _bidon_. I
drank as much as I dared, and thanked him: “_Ça va mieux._” The
_pinard_ went straight to my brain, I felt my mind cuddled by a
pleasant warmth, my thoughts became invested with a great contentment.
The train stopped; and the younger sprang out, carrying the empty
canteens of himself and his comrade. When they and he returned, I
enjoyed another cup. From that moment till we reached our destination
at about eight o’clock the older and I got on extraordinarily well.
When the gentlemen descended at their station he waxed almost familiar.
I was in excellent spirits; rather drunk; extremely tired. Now that the
two guardians and myself were alone in the compartment, the curiosity
which had hitherto been stifled by etiquette and pride of capture came
rapidly to light. Why was I here, anyway? I seemed well enough to
them.—Because my friend had written some letters, I told them.—But I
had done nothing myself?—I explained that we used to be together all
the time, _mon ami et moi_; that was the only reason which I knew
of.—It was very funny to see how this explanation improved matters. The
older in particular was immensely relieved.—I would without doubt, he
said, be set free immediately upon my arrival. The French government
didn’t keep people like me in prison.—They fired some questions about
America at me, to which I imaginatively replied. I think I told the
younger that the average height of buildings in America was nine
hundred metres. He stared and shook his head doubtfully, but I
convinced him in the end. Then in my turn I asked questions, the first
being: Where was my friend?—It seems that my friend had left Gré (or
whatever it was) the morning of the day I had entered it.—Did they know
where my friend was going?—They couldn’t say. They had been told that
he was very dangerous.—So we talked on and on: How long had I studied
French? I spoke very well. Was it hard to learn English?—

Yet when I climbed out to relieve myself by the roadside one of them
was at my heels.

Finally watches were consulted, tunics buttoned, hats donned. I was
told in a gruff voice to prepare myself; that we were approaching the
end of our journey. Looking at the erstwhile participants in
conversation, I scarcely knew them. They had put on with their caps a
positive ferocity of bearing. I began to think that I had dreamed the
incidents of the preceding hours.

We descended at a minute, dirty station which possessed the air of
having been dropped by mistake from the bung of the _gouvernement
français_. The older sought out the station master, who having nothing
to do was taking a siesta in a miniature waiting-room. The general
countenance of the place was exceedingly depressing; but I attempted to
keep up my spirits with the reflection that after all all this was but
a junction, and that from here we were to take a train for Marseilles
herself. The name of the station, Briouse, I found somewhat dreary. And
now the older returned with the news that our train wasn’t running
today, and that the next train didn’t arrive till early morning and
should we walk to Marseilles? I could check my great _sac_ and
overcoat. The small _sac_ I should carry along—it was only a step,
after all.

With a glance at the desolation of Briouse I agreed to the stroll. It
was a fine night for a little promenade; not too cool, and with a
promise of a moon stuck into the sky. The _sac_ and coat were
accordingly checked by the older; the station master glanced at me and
haughtily grunted (having learned that I was an American); and my
protectors and I set out.

I insisted that we stop at the first café and have some wine on me. To
this my escorts agreed, making me go ten paces ahead of them, and
waiting until I was through before stepping up to the bar—not from
politeness, to be sure, but because (as I soon gathered) _gendarmes_
were not any too popular in this part of the world, and the sight of
two _gendarmes_ with a prisoner might inspire the habitués to attempt a
rescue. Furthermore, on leaving the café (a desolate place if I ever
saw one, with a fearful _patronne_) I was instructed sharply to keep
close to them but on no account to place myself between them, there
being sundry villagers to be encountered before we struck the highroad
for Marseilles. Thanks to their forethought and my obedience the rescue
did not take place, nor did our party excite even the curiosity of the
scarce and soggy inhabitants of the unlovely town of Briouse.

The highroad won, all of us relaxed considerably. The _sac_ full of
suspicious letters which I bore on my shoulder was not so light as I
had thought, but the kick of the Briouse _pinard_ thrust me forward at
a good clip. The road was absolutely deserted; the night hung loosely
around it, here and there tattered by attempting moonbeams. I was
somewhat sorry to find the way hilly, and in places bad underfoot; yet
the unknown adventure lying before me, and the delicious silence of the
night (in which our words rattled queerly like tin soldiers in a
plush-lined box) boosted me into a condition of mysterious happiness.
We talked, the older and I, of strange subjects. As I suspected, he had
been not always a _gendarme_. He had seen service among the Arabs. He
had always liked languages and had picked up Arabian with great ease—of
this he was very proud. For instance—the Arabian way of saying “Give me
to eat” was this; when you wanted wine you said so and so; “Nice day”
was something else. He thought I could pick it up inasmuch as I had
done so creditably with French. He was absolutely certain that English
was much easier to learn than French, and would not be moved. Now what
was the American language like? I explained that it was a sort of
Argot-English. When I gave him some phrases he was astonished—“It
sounds like English!” he cried, and retailed his stock of English
phrases for my approval. I tried hard to get his intonation of the
Arabian, and he helped me on the difficult sounds. America must be a
strange place, he thought….

After two hours walking he called a halt, bidding us rest. We all lay
flat on the grass by the roadside. The moon was still battling with
clouds. The darkness of the fields on either side was total. I crawled
on hands and knees to the sound of silver-trickling water and found a
little spring-fed stream. Prone, weight on elbows, I drank heavily of
its perfect blackness. It was icy, talkative, minutely alive.

The older presently gave a perfunctory “_alors_”; we got up; I hoisted
my suspicious utterances upon my shoulder, which recognized the renewal
of hostilities with a neuralgic throb. I banged forward with bigger and
bigger feet. A bird, scared, swooped almost into my face. Occasionally
some night-noise pricked a futile, minute hole in the enormous curtain
of soggy darkness. Uphill now. Every muscle thoroughly aching, head
spinning, I half-straightened my no longer obedient body; and jumped:
face to face with a little wooden man hanging all by itself in a grove
of low trees.

—The wooden body, clumsy with pain, burst into fragile legs with
absurdly large feet and funny writhing toes; its little stiff arms made
abrupt cruel equal angles with the road. About its stunted loins clung
a ponderous and jocular fragment of drapery. On one terribly brittle
shoulder the droll lump of its neckless head ridiculously lived. There
was in this complete silent doll a gruesome truth of instinct, a
success of uncanny poignancy, an unearthly ferocity of rectangular
emotion.

For perhaps a minute the almost obliterated face and mine eyed one
another in the silence of intolerable autumn.

Who was this wooden man? Like a sharp black mechanical cry in the
spongy organism of gloom stood the coarse and sudden sculpture of his
torment; the big mouth of night carefully spurted the angular actual
language of his martyred body. I had seen him before in the dream of
some mediaeval saint, with a thief sagging at either side, surrounded
with crisp angels. Tonight he was alone; save for myself, and the
moon’s minute flower pushing between slabs of fractured cloud.

I was wrong, the moon and I and he were not alone…. A glance up the
road gave me two silhouettes at pause. The _gendarmes_ were waiting. I
must hurry to catch up or incur suspicions by my sloth. I hastened
forward, with a last look over my shoulder … the wooden man was
watching us.

When I came abreast of them, expecting abuse, I was surprised by the
older’s saying quietly “We haven’t far to go,” and plunging forward
imperturbably into the night.

Nor had we gone a half hour before several dark squat forms confronted
us: houses. I decided that I did not like houses—particularly as now my
guardian’s manner abruptly changed; once more tunics were buttoned,
holsters adjusted, and myself directed to walk between and keep always
up with the others. Now the road became thoroughly afflicted with
houses, houses not, however, so large and lively as I had expected from
my dreams of Marseilles. Indeed we seemed to be entering an extremely
small and rather disagreeable town. I ventured to ask what its name
was. “Mah-say” was the response. By this I was fairly puzzled. However
the street led us to a square, and I saw the towers of a church sitting
in the sky; between them the round, yellow, big moon looked immensely
and peacefully conscious … no one was stirring in the little streets,
all the houses were keeping the moon’s secret.

We walked on.

I was too tired to think. I merely felt the town as a unique unreality.
What was it? I knew—the moon’s picture of a town. These streets with
their houses did not exist, they were but a ludicrous projection of the
moon’s sumptuous personality. This was a city of Pretend, created by
the hypnotism of moonlight.—Yet when I examined the moon she too seemed
but a painting of a moon and the sky in which she lived a fragile echo
of colour. If I blew hard the whole shy mechanism would collapse gently
with a neat soundless crash. I must not, or lose all.

We turned a corner, then another. My guides conferred concerning the
location of something, I couldn’t make out what. Then the older nodded
in the direction of a long dull dirty mass not a hundred yards away,
which (as near as I could see) served either as a church or a tomb.
Toward this we turned. All too soon I made out its entirely dismal
exterior. Grey long stone walls, surrounded on the street side by a
fence of ample proportions and uniformly dull colour. Now I perceived
that we made toward a gate, singularly narrow and forbidding, in the
grey long wall. No living soul appeared to inhabit this desolation.

The older rang at the gate. A _gendarme_ with a revolver answered his
ring; and presently he was admitted, leaving the younger and myself to
wait. And now I began to realize that this was the _gendarmerie_ of the
town, into which for safe-keeping I was presently to be inducted for
the night. My heart sank, I confess, at the thought of sleeping in the
company of that species of humanity which I had come to detest beyond
anything in hell or on earth. Meanwhile the doorman had returned with
the older, and I was bidden roughly enough to pick up my baggage and
march. I followed my guides down a corridor, up a staircase, and into a
dark, small room where a candle was burning. Dazzled by the light and
dizzied by the fatigue of my ten or twelve mile stroll, I let my
baggage go; and leaned against a convenient wall, trying to determine
who was now my tormentor.

Facing me at a table stood a man of about my own height, and, as I
should judge, about forty years old. His face was seedy sallow and
long. He had bushy semi-circular eyebrows which drooped so much as to
reduce his eyes to mere blinking slits. His cheeks were so furrowed
that they leaned inward. He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large
beak of preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the
expression of falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the
unimportant chin. His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which
twitched nervously. His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse,
from which hung a croix de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks
culminated in bed-slippers. In physique he reminded me a little of
Ichabod Crane. His neck was exactly like a hen’s: I felt sure that when
he drank he must tilt his head back as hens do in order that the liquid
may run down their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright,
together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the
nervous “uh-ah, uh-ah” which punctuated his insecure phrases like
uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a
rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and
was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated
somewhere in the background of his consciousness.

“_Vous êtes, uh-ah, l’Am-é-ri-cain?_”

“_Je suis Américain_,” I admitted.

“_Eh-bi-en uh-ah uh-ah_—We were expecting you.” He surveyed me with
great interest.

Behind this seedy and restless personage I noted his absolute likeness,
adorning one of the walls. The rooster was faithfully depicted à la
Rembrandt at half-length in the stirring guise of a fencer, foil in
hand, and wearing enormous gloves. The execution of this masterpiece
left something to be desired; but the whole betokened a certain spirit
and verve, on the part of the sitter, which I found difficulty in
attributing to the being before me.

“_Vous êtes uh-ah KEW-MANGZ?_”

“What?” I said, completely baffled by this extraordinary dissyllable.

“_Comprenez vous fran-çais?_”

“_Un peu._”

“_Bon. Alors, vous vous ap-pel-lez KEW MANGZ, n’est-ce pas? Edouard
KEW-MANGZ?_”

“Oh,” I said, relieved, “yes.” It was really amazing, the way he
writhed around the G.

“_Comment ça se prononce en anglais?_”

I told him.

He replied benevolently, somewhat troubled “uh-ah uh-ah uh-ah—why are
you here, KEW-MANGZ?”

At this question I was for one moment angrier than I had ever before
been in all my life. Then I realized the absurdity of the situation,
and laughed.—“_Sais pas_.”

The questionnaire continued:

“You were in the Red Cross?”—“Surely, in the Norton Harjes Ambulance,
Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un.”—“You had a friend
there?”—“Naturally.”—“_Il a écrit, votre ami, des bêtises, n’est ce
pas?_”—“So they told me. _N’en sais rien._”—“What sort of person was
your friend?”—“He was a magnificent person, always _très gentil_ with
me.”—(With a queer pucker the fencer remarked) “Your friend got you
into a lot of trouble, though.”—(To which I replied with a broad grin)
“_N’importe_, we are _camarades_.”

A stream of puzzled uh-ahs followed this reply. The fencer, or rooster
or whatever he might be, finally, picking up the lamp and the lock,
said: “_Alors, viens avec moi, KEW-MANGZ._” I started to pick up the
_sac_, but he told me it would be kept in the office (we being in the
office). I said I had checked a large _sac_ and my fur overcoat at
Briouse, and he assured me they would be sent on by train. He now
dismissed the _gendarmes_, who had been listening curiously to the
examination. As I was conducted from the bureau I asked him
point-blank: “How long am I to stay here?”—to which he answered “_Oh,
peut-être un jour, deux jours, je ne sais pas._”

Two days in a _gendarmerie_ would be enough, I thought. We marched out.

Behind me the bedslippered rooster uhahingly shuffled. In front of me
clumsily gamboled the huge imitation of myself. It descended the
terribly worn stairs. It turned to the right and disappeared….

We were standing in a chapel.

The shrinking light which my guide held had become suddenly minute; it
was beating, senseless and futile, with shrill fists upon a thick
enormous moisture of gloom. To the left and right through lean oblongs
of stained glass burst dirty burglars of moonlight. The clammy stupid
distance uttered dimly an uncanny conflict—the mutterless tumbling of
brutish shadows. A crowding ooze battled with my lungs. My nostrils
fought against the monstrous atmospheric slime which hugged a sweet
unpleasant odour. Staring ahead, I gradually disinterred the pale
carrion of the darkness—an altar, guarded with the ugliness of unlit
candles, on which stood inexorably the efficient implements for eating
God.

I was to be confessed, then, of my guilty conscience, before retiring?
It boded well for the morrow.

… the measured accents of the fencer: “_Prenez votre paillasse._” I
turned. He was bending over a formless mass in one corner of the room.
The mass stretched halfway to the ceiling. It was made of
mattress-shapes. I pulled at one—burlap, stuffed with prickly straw. I
got it on my shoulder. “_Alors._” He lighted me to the door-way by
which we had entered. (I was somewhat pleased to leave the place.)

Back, down a corridor, up more stairs; and we were confronted by a
small scarred pair of doors from which hung two of the largest padlocks
I had ever seen. Being unable to go further, I stopped: he produced a
huge ring of keys. Fumbled with the locks. No sound of life: the keys
rattled in the locks with surprising loudness; the latter, with an evil
grace, yielded—the two little miserable doors swung open.

Into the square blackness I staggered with my _paillasse_. There was no
way of judging the size of the dark room which uttered no sound. In
front of me was a pillar. “Put it down by that post, and sleep there
for tonight, in the morning _nous allons voir_” directed the fencer.
“You won’t need a blanket,” he added; and the doors clanged, the light
and fencer disappeared.

I needed no second invitation to sleep. Fully dressed, I fell on my
_paillasse_ with a weariness which I have never felt before or since.
But I did not close my eyes: for all about me there rose a sea of most
extraordinary sound… the hitherto empty and minute room became suddenly
enormous: weird cries, oaths, laughter, pulling it sideways and
backward, extending it to inconceivable depth and width, telescoping it
to frightful nearness. From all directions, by at least thirty voices
in eleven languages (I counted as I lay Dutch, Belgian, Spanish,
Turkish, Arabian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, German, French—and English)
at distances varying from seventy feet to a few inches, for twenty
minutes I was ferociously bombarded. Nor was my perplexity purely
aural. About five minutes after lying down, I saw (by a hitherto
unnoticed speck of light which burned near the doors which I had
entered) two extraordinary looking figures—one a well-set man with a
big, black beard, the other a consumptive with a bald head and sickly
moustache, both clad only in their knee-length chemises, hairy legs
naked, feet bare—wander down the room and urinate profusely in the
corner nearest me. This act accomplished, the figures wandered back,
greeted with a volley of ejaculatory abuse from the invisible
co-occupants of my new sleeping-apartment; and disappeared in darkness.

I remarked to myself that the _gendarmes_ of this _gendarmerie_ were
peculiarly up in languages, and fell asleep.




IV.
LE NOUVEAU


_“Vous ne voulez pas de café?”_

The threatening question recited in a hoarse voice woke me like a shot.
Sprawled half on and half off my _paillasse_, I looked suddenly up into
a juvenile pimply face with a red tassel bobbing in its eyes. A boy in
a Belgian uniform was stooping over me. In one hand a huge pail a third
full of liquid slime. I said fiercely: “_Au contraire, je veux bien._”
And collapsed on the mattress.

“_Pas de quart, vous?_” the face fired at me.

“_Comprends pas_,” I replied, wondering what on earth the words meant.

“English?”

“American.”

At this moment a tin cup appeared mysteriously out of the gloom and was
rapidly filled from the pail, after which operation the tassel
remarked: “Your friend here” and disappeared.

I decided I had gone completely crazy.

The cup had been deposited near me. Not daring to approach it, I
boosted my aching corpse on one of its futile elbows and gazed blankly
around. My eyes, wading laboriously through a dark atmosphere, a
darkness gruesomely tactile, perceived only here and there lively
patches of vibrating humanity. My ears recognised English, something
which I took to be low-German and which was Belgian, Dutch, Polish, and
what I guessed to be Russian.

Trembling with this chaos, my hand sought the cup. The cup was not
warm; the contents, which I hastily gulped, were not even tepid. The
taste was dull, almost bitter, clinging, thick, nauseating. I felt a
renewed interest in living as soon as the deathful swallow descended to
my abdomen, very much as a suicide who changes his mind after the fatal
dose. I decided that it would be useless to vomit. I sat up. I looked
around.

The darkness was rapidly going out of the sluggish stinking air. I was
sitting on my mattress at one end of a sort of room, filled with
pillars; ecclesiastical in feeling. I already perceived it to be of
enormous length. My mattress resembled an island: all around it on the
floor at distances varying from a quarter of an inch to ten feet (which
constituted the limit of distinct vision) reposed startling identities.
There was blood in some of them. Others consisted of a rind of blueish
matter sustaining a core of yellowish froth. From behind me a chunk of
hurtling spittle joined its fellows. I decided to stand up.

At this moment, at the far end of the room, I seemed to see an
extraordinary vulture-like silhouette leap up from nowhere. It rushed a
little way in my direction crying hoarsely “_Corvée d’eau!_”—stopped,
bent down at what I perceived to be a _paillasse_ like mine, jerked
what was presumably the occupant by the feet, shook him, turned to the
next, and so on up to six. As there seemed to be innumerable
_paillasses_, laid side by side at intervals of perhaps a foot with
their heads to the wall on three sides of me, I was wondering why the
vulture had stopped at six. On each mattress a crude imitation of
humanity, wrapped ear-high in its blanket, lay and drank from a cup
like mine and spat long and high into the room. The ponderous reek of
sleepy bodies undulated toward me from three directions. I had lost
sight of the vulture in a kind of insane confusion which arose from the
further end of the room. It was as if he had touched off six high
explosives. Occasional pauses in the minutely crazy din were accurately
punctuated by exploding bowels; to the great amusement of innumerable
somebodies, whose precise whereabouts the gloom carefully guarded.

I felt that I was the focus of a group of indistinct recumbents who
were talking about me to one another in many incomprehensible tongues.
I noticed beside every pillar (including the one beside which I had
innocently thrown down my mattress the night before) a good sized pail,
overflowing with urine, and surrounded by a large irregular puddle. My
mattress was within an inch of the nearest puddle. What I took to be a
man, an amazing distance off, got out of bed and succeeded in locating
the pail nearest to him after several attempts. Ten invisible
recumbents yelled at him in six languages.

All at once a handsome figure rose from the gloom at my elbow. I smiled
stupidly into his clear hardish eyes. And he remarked pleasantly:

“Your friend’s here, Johnny, and wants to see you.”

A bulge of pleasure swooped along my body, chasing aches and numbness,
my muscles danced, nerves tingled in perpetual holiday.

B. was lying on his camp-cot, wrapped like an Eskimo in a blanket which
hid all but his nose and eyes.

“Hello, Cummings,” he said smiling. “There’s a man here who is a friend
of Vanderbilt and knew Cézanne.”

I gazed somewhat critically at B. There was nothing particularly insane
about him, unless it was his enthusiastic excitement, which might
almost be attributed to my jack-in-the-box manner of arriving. He said:
“There are people here who speak English, Russian, Arabian. There are
the finest people here! Did you go to Gré? I fought rats all night
there. Huge ones. They tried to eat me. And from Gré to Paris? I had
three gendarmes all the way to keep me from escaping, and they all fell
asleep.”

I began to be afraid that I was asleep myself. “Please be frank,” I
begged. “Strictly _entre nous_: am I dreaming, or is this a bug-house?”

B. laughed, and said: “I thought so when I arrived two days ago. When I
came in sight of the place a lot of girls waved from the window and
yelled at me. I no sooner got inside than a queer looking duck whom I
took to be a nut came rushing up to me and cried: ‘Too late for
soup!’—This is Campe de Triage de la Ferté Macé, Orne, France, and all
these fine people were arrested as spies. Only two or three of them can
speak a word of French, and that’s _soupe!_”

I said, “My God, I thought Marseilles was somewhere on the
Mediterranean Ocean, and that this was a _gendarmerie_.”

“But this is M-a-c-é. It’s a little mean town, where everybody snickers
and sneers at you if they see you’re a prisoner. They did at me.”

“Do you mean to say we’re _espions_ too?”

“Of course!” B. said enthusiastically. “Thank God! And in to stay.
Every time I think of the _section sanitaire_, and A. and his thugs,
and the whole rotten red-taped Croix Rouge, I have to laugh. Cummings,
I tell you this is the finest place on earth!”

A vision of the Chef de la section Sanitaire Ving-et-Un passed through
my mind. The doughy face. Imitation-English-officer swagger. Large
calves, squeaking puttees. The daily lecture: “I doughno what’s
th’matter with you fellers. You look like nice boys. Well-edjucated.
But you’re so dirty in your habits. You boys are always kickin’ because
I don’t put you on a car together. I’m ashamed to do it, that’s why. I
doughtwanta give this section a black eye. We gotta show these lousy
Frenchmen what Americans are. We gotta show we’re superior to ’em.
Those bastards doughno what a bath means. And you fellers are always
hangin’ ’round, talkin’ with them dirty frog-eaters that does the
cookin’ and the dirty work ’round here. How d’you boys expect me to
give you a chance? I’d like to put you fellers on a car, I wanta see
you boys happy. But I don’t dare to, that’s why. If you want me to send
you out, you gotta shave and look neat, and _keep away from them dirty
Frenchmen_. We Americans are over here to learn them lousy bastards
something.”

I laughed for sheer joy.

A terrific tumult interrupted my mirth. “_Par ici!_”—“Get out of the
way you damn Polak!”—“M’sieu, M’sieu!”—“Over here!”—“_Mais
non!_”—“_Gott-ver-dummer!_” I turned in terror to see my _paillasse_ in
the clutches of four men who were apparently rending it in as many
directions.

One was a clean-shaven youngish man with lively eyes, alert and
muscular, whom I identified as the man who had called me “Johnny.” He
had hold of a corner of the mattress and was pulling against the
possessor of the opposite corner: an incoherent personage enveloped in
a buffoonery of amazing rags and patches, with a shabby head on which
excited wisps of dirty hair stood upright in excitement, and the tall,
ludicrous, extraordinary, almost noble figure of a dancing bear. A
third corner of the _paillasse_ was rudely grasped by a six-foot
combination of yellow hair, red hooligan face, and sky-blue trousers;
assisted by the undersized tasseled mucker in Belgian uniform, with a
pimply rogue’s mug and unlimited impertinence of diction, who had
awakened me by demanding if I wanted coffee. Albeit completely dazed by
the uncouth vocal fracas, I realised in some manner that these hostile
forces were contending, not for the possession of the mattress, but
merely for the privilege of presenting the mattress to myself.

Before I could offer any advice on this delicate topic, a childish
voice cried emphatically beside my ear: “Put the mattress here! What
are you trying to do? There’s no use destroy-ing a mat-tress!”—at the
same moment the mattress rushed with cobalt strides in my direction,
propelled by the successful efforts of the Belgian uniform and the
hooligan visage, the clean-shaven man and the incoherent bear still
desperately clutching their respective corners; and upon its arrival
was seized with surprising strength by the owner of the child’s voice—a
fluffy little gnome-shaped man with a sensitive face which had suffered
much—and indignantly deposited beside B.’s bed in a space mysteriously
cleared for its reception. The gnome immediately kneeled upon it and
fell to carefully smoothing certain creases caused by the recent
conflict, exclaiming slowly syllable by syllable: “Mon Dieu. Now,
that’s better, you mustn’t do things like that.” The clean-shaven man
regarded him loftily with folded arms, while the tassel and the
trousers victoriously inquired if I had a cigarette?—and upon receiving
one apiece (also the gnome, and the clean-shaven man, who accepted his
with some dignity) sat down without much ado on B.’s bed—which groaned
ominously in protest—and hungrily fired questions at me. The bear
meanwhile, looking as if nothing had happened, adjusted his ruffled
costume with a satisfied air and (calmly gazing into the distance)
began with singularly delicate fingers to stuff a stunted and ancient
pipe with what appeared to be a mixture of wood and manure.

I was still answering questions, when a gnarled voice suddenly
threatened, over our head: “Broom? You. Everybody. Clean. _Surveillant_
says. Not me, no?”—I started, expecting to see a parrot.

It was the silhouette.

A vulture-like figure stood before me, a demoralised broom clenched in
one claw or fist: it had lean legs cased in shabby trousers, muscular
shoulders covered with a rough shirt open at the neck, knotted arms,
and a coarse insane face crammed beneath the visor of a cap. The face
consisted of a rapid nose, droopy moustache, ferocious watery small
eyes, a pugnacious chin, and sunken cheeks hideously smiling. There was
something in the ensemble at once brutal and ridiculous, vigorous and
pathetic.

Again I had not time to speak; for the hooligan in azure trousers
hurled his butt at the bear’s feet, exclaiming: “There’s another for
you, Polak!”—jumped from the bed, seized the broom, and poured upon the
vulture a torrent of _Gott-ver-dummers_, to which the latter replied
copiously and in kind. Then the red face bent within a few inches of my
own, and for the first time I saw that it had recently been young—“I
say I do your sweep for you” it translated pleasantly. I thanked it;
and the vulture, exclaiming: “Good. Good. Not me. _Surveillant._ Harree
does it for everybody. Hee, hee”—rushed off, followed by Harree and the
tassel. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the tall, ludicrous,
extraordinary, almost proud figure of the bear stoop with quiet
dignity, the musical fingers close with a singular delicacy upon the
moist indescribable eighth-of-an-inch of tobacco.

I did not know that this was a Delectable Mountain….

The clean-shaven man (who appeared to have been completely won over by
his smoke), and the fluffy gnome, who had completed the arrangement of
my _paillasse_, now entered into conversation with myself and B.; the
clean-shaven one seating himself in Harree’s stead, the gnome declining
(on the grounds that the bed was already sufficiently loaded) to occupy
the place left vacant by the tassel’s exit, and leaning against the
drab, sweating, poisonous wall. He managed, however, to call our
attention to the shelf at B.’s head which he himself had constructed,
and promised me a similar luxury _toute de suite_. He was a Russian,
and had a wife and _gosse_ in Paris. “My name is Monsieur Au-guste, at
your service”—and his gentle pale eyes sparkled. The clean-shaven
talked distinct and absolutely perfect English. His name was Fritz. He
was a Norwegian, a stoker on a ship. “You mustn’t mind that feller that
wanted you to sweep. He’s crazy. They call him John the Baigneur. He
used to be the bathman. Now he’s _Maître de Chambre_. They wanted me to
take it—I said, ‘F—— it, I don’t want it.’ Let him have it. That’s no
kind of a job, everyone complaining and on top of you morning till
night. ‘Let them that wants the job take it’ I said. That crazy
Dutchman’s been here for two years. They told him to get out and he
wouldn’t, he was too fond of the booze” (I jumped at the slang) “and
the girls. They took it away from John and give it to that little
Ree-shar feller, that doctor. That was a swell job he had, _baigneur_,
too. All the bloody liquor you can drink and a girl every time you want
one. He ain’t never had a girl in his life, that Ree-shar feller.” His
laughter was hard, clear, cynical. “That Pompom, the little Belgian
feller was just here, he’s a great one for the girls. He and Harree.
Always getting _cabinot_. I got it twice myself since I been here.”

All this time the enormous room was filling gradually with dirty light.
In the further end six figures were brooming furiously, yelling to each
other in the dust like demons. A seventh, Harree, was loping to and fro
splashing water from a pail and enveloping everything and everybody in
a ponderous and blasphemous fog of _Gott-ver-dummers_. Along three
sides (with the exception, that is, of the nearer end, which boasted
the sole door) were laid, with their lengths at right angles to the
wall, at intervals of three or four feet, something like forty
_paillasses_. On each, with half a dozen exceptions (where the
occupants had not yet finished their coffee or were on duty for the
_corvée_) lay the headless body of a man smothered in its blanket, only
the boots showing.

The demons were working towards our end of the room. Harree had got his
broom and was assisting. Nearer and nearer they came; converging, they
united their separate heaps of filth in a loudly stinking single mound
at the door. Brooms were stacked against the wall in the corner. The
men strolled back to their mattresses.

Monsieur Auguste, whose French had not been able to keep pace with
Fritz’s English, saw his chance, and proposed “now that the Room is all
clean, let us go take a little walk, the three of us.” Fritz understood
perfectly, and rose, remarking as he fingered his immaculate chin
“Well, I guess I’ll take a shave before the bloody _planton_ comes”—and
Monsieur Auguste, B., and I started down the room.

It was in shape oblong, about 80 feet by 40, unmistakably
ecclesiastical in feeling; two rows of wooden pillars, spaced at
intervals of fifteen feet, rose to a vaulted ceiling 25 or 30 feet
above the floor. As you stood with your back to the door, and faced
down the room, you had in the near right-hand corner (where the brooms
stood) six pails of urine. On the right-hand long wall, a little beyond
the angle of this corner, a few boards, tacked together in any fashion
to make a two-sided screen four feet in height, marked the position of
a _cabinet d’aisance_, composed of a small coverless tin pail identical
with the other six, and a board of the usual design which could be
placed on the pail or not as desired. The wooden floor in the
neighborhood of the booth and pails was of a dark colour, obviously
owing to the continual overflow of their contents.

The right-hand long wall contained something like ten large windows, of
which the first was commanded by the somewhat primitive cabinet. There
were no other windows in the remaining walls; or they had been
carefully rendered useless. In spite of this fact, the inhabitants had
contrived a couple of peep-holes—one in the door-end and one in the
left-hand long wall; the former commanding the gate by which I had
entered, the latter a portion of the street by which I had reached the
gate. The blocking of all windows on three sides had an obvious
significance: _les hommes_ were not supposed to see anything which went
on in the world without; _les hommes_ might, however, look their fill
on a little washing-shed, on a corner of what seemed to be another wing
of the building, and on a bleak lifeless abject landscape of scrubby
woods beyond—which constituted the view from the ten windows on the
right. The authorities had miscalculated a little in one respect: a
merest fraction of the barb-wire pen which began at the corner of the
above-mentioned building was visible from these windows, which windows
(I was told) were consequently thronged by fighting men at the time of
the girl’s promenade. A _planton_, I was also told, made it his
business, by keeping _les femmes_ out of this corner of their _cour_ at
the point of the bayonet to deprive them of the sight of their
admirers. In addition, it was dry bread or _cabinot_ for any of either
sex who were caught communicating with each other. Moreover the
promenades of the men and the women occurred at roughly speaking the
same hour, so that a man or woman who remained upstairs on the chance
of getting a smile or a wave from his or her girl or lover lost the
promenade thereby….

We had in succession gazed from the windows, crossed the end of the
room, and started down the other side, Monsieur Auguste marching
between us—when suddenly B. exclaimed in English “Good morning! How are
you today?” And I looked across Monsieur Auguste, anticipating another
Harree or at least a Fritz. What was my surprise to see a spare
majestic figure of manifest refinement, immaculately apparelled in a
crisp albeit collarless shirt, carefully mended trousers in which the
remains of a crease still lingered, a threadbare but perfectly fitting
swallow-tail coat, and newly varnished (if somewhat ancient) shoes.
Indeed for the first time since my arrival at La Ferté I was confronted
by a perfect type: the apotheosis of injured nobility, the humiliated
victim of perfectly unfortunate circumstances, the utterly respectable
gentleman who had seen better days. There was about him, moreover,
something irretrievably English, nay even pathetically Victorian—it was
as if a page of Dickens was shaking my friend’s hand. “Count Bragard, I
want you to meet my friend Cummings”—he saluted me in modulated and
courteous accents of indisputable culture, gracefully extending his
pale hand. “I have heard a great deal about you from B., and wanted
very much to meet you. It is a pleasure to find a friend of my friend
B., someone congenial and intelligent in contrast to these swine”—he
indicated the room with a gesture of complete contempt. “I see you were
strolling. Let us take a turn.” Monsieur Auguste said tactfully, “I’ll
see you soon, friends,” and left us with an affectionate shake of the
hand and a sidelong glance of jealousy and mistrust at B.’s respectable
friend.

“You’re looking pretty well today, Count Bragard,” B. said amiably.

“I do well enough,” the Count answered. “It is a frightful strain—you
of course realise that—for anyone who has been accustomed to the
decencies, let alone the luxuries, of life. This filth”—he pronounced
the word with indescribable bitterness—“this herding of men like
cattle—they treat us no better than pigs here. The fellows drop their
dung in the very room where they sleep. What is one to expect of a
place like this? _Ce n’est pas une existence_”—his French was glib and
faultless.

“I was telling my friend that you knew Cézanne,” said B. “Being an
artist he was naturally much interested.”

Count Bragard stopped in astonishment, and withdrew his hands slowly
from the tails of his coat. “Is it possible!” he exclaimed, in great
agitation. “What an astonishing coincidence! I am myself a painter. You
perhaps noticed this badge”—he indicated a button attached to his left
lapel, and I bent and read the words: On War Service. “I always wear
it,” he said with a smile of faultless sorrow, and resumed his walk.
“They don’t know what it means here, but I wear it all the same. I was
a special representative for The London Sphere at the front in this
war. I did the trenches and all that sort of thing. They paid me well;
I got fifteen pounds a week. And why not? I am an R.A. My specialty was
horses. I painted the finest horses in England, among them the King’s
own entry in the last Derby. Do you know London?” We said no. “If you
are ever in London, go to the” (I forget the name) “Hotel—one of the
best in town. It has a beautiful large bar, exquisitely furnished in
the very best taste. Anyone will tell you where to find the ——. It has
one of my paintings over the bar: “Straight-jacket” (or some such name)
“the Marquis of ——’s horse, who won last time the race was run. I was
in America in 1910. You know Cornelius Vanderbilt perhaps? I painted
some of his horses. We were the best of friends, Vanderbilt and I. I
got handsome prices, you understand, three, five, six thousand pounds.
When I left, he gave me this card—I have it here somewhere—” he again
stopped, sought in his breastpocket a moment, and produced a visiting
card. On one side I read the name “Cornelius Vanderbilt”—on the other,
in bold handwriting—“to my very dear friend Count F.A. de Bragard” and
a date. “He hated to have me go.”

I was walking in a dream.

“Have you your sketch-books and paints with you? What a pity. I am
always intending to send to England for mine, but you know—one can’t
paint in a place like this. It is impossible—all this dirt and these
filthy people—it stinks! Ugh!”

I forced myself to say: “How did you happen to come here?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “How indeed, you may well ask! I cannot tell
you. It must have been some hideous mistake. As soon as I got here I
spoke to the Directeur and to the Surveillant. The Directeur said he
knew nothing about it; the Surveillant told me confidentially that it
was a mistake on the part of the French government; that I would be out
directly. He’s not such a bad sort. So I am waiting; every day I expect
orders from the English government for my release. The whole thing is
preposterous. I wrote to the Embassy and told them so. As soon as I set
foot outside this place, I shall sue the French government for ten
thousand pounds for the loss of time it has occasioned me. Imagine it—I
had contracts with countless members of The Lords—and the war came.
Then I was sent to the front by The Sphere—and here I am, every day
costing me dear, rotting away in this horrible place. The time I have
wasted here has already cost me a fortune.”

He paused directly in front of the door and spoke with solemnity: “A
man might as well be dead.”

Scarcely had the words passed his lips when I almost jumped out of my
skin, for directly before us on the other side of the wall arose the
very noise which announced to Scrooge the approach of Marley’s ghost—a
dismal clanking and rattling of chains. Had Marley’s transparent figure
walked straight through the wall and up to the Dickensian character at
my side, I would have been less surprised than I was by what actually
happened.

The doors opened with an uncanny bang and in the bang stood a fragile
minute queer figure, remotely suggesting an old man. The chief
characteristic of the apparition was a certain disagreeable nudity
which resulted from its complete lack of all the accepted appurtenances
and prerogatives of old age. Its little stooping body, helpless and
brittle, bore with extraordinary difficulty a head of absurd largeness,
yet which moved on the fleshless neck with a horrible agility. Dull
eyes sat in the clean-shaven wrinkles of a face neatly hopeless. At the
knees a pair of hands hung, infantile in their smallness. In the loose
mouth a tiny cigarette had perched and was solemnly smoking itself.

Suddenly the figure darted at me with a spiderlike entirety.

I felt myself lost.

A voice said mechanically from the vicinity of my feet: “_Il vous faut
prendre la douche_”—I stared stupidly. The spectre was poised before
me; its averted eyes contemplated the window. “Take your bath,” it
added as an afterthought, in English—“Come with me.” It turned
suddenly. It hurried to the doorway. I followed. Its rapid deadly
doll-like hands shut and skillfully locked the doors in a twinkling.
“Come,” its voice said.

It hurried before me down two dirty flights of narrow mutilated stairs.
It turned left, and passed through an open door.

I found myself in the wet sunless air of morning.

To the right it hurried, following the wall of the building. I pursued
it mechanically. At the corner, which I had seen from the window
upstairs, the barbed-wire fence eight feet in height began. The thing
paused, produced a key and unlocked a gate. The first three or four
feet of wire swung inward. He entered. I after him.

In a flash the gate was locked behind me, and I was following along a
wall at right angles to the first. I strode after the thing. A moment
before I had been walking in a free world: now I was again a prisoner.
The sky was still over me, the clammy morning caressed me; but walls of
wire and stone told me that my instant of freedom had departed. I was
in fact traversing a lane no wider than the gate; on my left,
barbed-wire separated me from the famous _cour_ in which _les femmes se
promenent_—a rectangle about 50 feet deep and 200 long, with a stone
wall at the further end of it and otherwise surrounded by wire;—on my
right, grey sameness of stone, the _ennui_ of the regular and the
perpendicular, the ponderous ferocity of silence….

I had taken automatically some six or eight steps in pursuit of the
fleeing spectre when, right over my head, the grey stone curdled with a
female darkness; the hard and the angular softening in a putrescent
explosion of thick wriggling laughter. I started, looked up, and
encountered a window stuffed with four savage fragments of crowding
Face: four livid, shaggy disks focussing hungrily; four pair of uncouth
eyes rapidly smouldering; eight lips shaking in a toothless and viscous
titter. Suddenly above and behind these terrors rose a single horror of
beauty—a crisp vital head, a young ivory, actual face, a night of firm,
alive, icy hair, a white, large, frightful smile.

… The thing was crying two or three paces in front of me: “Come!” The
heads had vanished as by magic.

I dived forward; followed through a little door in the wall into a room
about fifteen feet square, occupied by a small stove, a pile of wood,
and a ladder. He plunged through another even smaller door, into a
bleak rectangular place, where I was confronted on the left by a large
tin bath and on the right by ten wooden tubs, each about a yard in
diameter, set in a row against the wall. “Undress” commanded the
spectre. I did so. “Go into the first one.” I climbed into the tub.
“You shall pull the string,” the spectre said, hurriedly throwing his
cigarette into a corner. I stared upward, and discovered a string
dangling from a kind of reservoir over my head: I pulled: and was
saluted by a stabbing crash of icy water. I leaped from the tub. “Here
is your napkin. Make dry yourself”—he handed me a piece of cloth a
little bigger than a handkerchief. “Hurree.” I donned my clothes, wet
and shivering and altogether miserable. “Good. Come now!” I followed
him, through the room with the stove, into the barbed-wire lane. A
hoarse shout rose from the yard—which was filled with women, girls,
children, and a baby or two. I thought I recognised one of the four
terrors who had saluted me from the window, in a girl of 18 with a
soiled slobby body huddling beneath its dingy dress; her bony shoulders
stifled in a shawl upon which excremental hair limply spouted; a huge
empty mouth; and a red nose, sticking between the bluish cheeks that
shook with spasms of coughing. Just inside the wire a figure
reminiscent of Gré, gun on shoulder, revolver on hip, moved
monotonously.

The apparition hurried me through the gate, and along the wall into the
building, where instead of mounting the stairs he pointed down a long,
gloomy corridor with a square of light at the end of it, saying
rapidly, “Go to the promenade”—and vanished.

With the laughter of the Five still ringing in my ears, and no very
clear conception of the meaning of existence, I stumbled down the
corridor; bumping squarely into a beefy figure with a bull’s neck and
the familiar revolver who demanded furiously: “What are you doing
there? _Nom de Dieu!_”—“_Pardon. Les douches_,” I answered, quelled by
the collision.—He demanded in wrathy French “Who took you to the
douches?”—For a moment I was at a complete loss—then Fritz’s remark
about the new _baigneur_ flashed through my mind: “Ree-shar” I answered
calmly.—The bull snorted satisfactorily. “Get into the _cour_ and hurry
up about it” he ordered.—“_C’est par là?_” I inquired politely.—He
stared at me contemptuously without answering; so I took it upon myself
to use the nearest door, hoping that he would have the decency not to
shoot me. I had no sooner crossed the threshold when I found myself
once more in the welcome air; and not ten paces away I espied B.
peacefully lounging, with some thirty others, within a _cour_ about one
quarter the size of the women’s. I marched up to a little dingy gate in
the barbed-wire fence, and was hunting for the latch (as no padlock was
in evidence) when a scared voice cried loudly “_Qu’est ce que vous
faites là!_” and I found myself stupidly looking into a rifle. B.,
Fritz, Harree, Pompom, Monsieur Auguste, The Bear, and the last but not
least Count de Bragard immediately informed the trembling _planton_
that I was a _Nouveau_ who had just returned from the _douches_ to
which I had been escorted by Monsieur Reeshar, and that I should be
admitted to the _cour_ by all means. The cautious watcher of the skies
was not, however, to be fooled by any such fol-de-rol and stood his
ground. Fortunately at this point the beefy _planton_ yelled from the
doorway “Let him in,” and I was accordingly let in, to the
gratification of my friends, and against the better judgment of the
guardian of the _cour_, who muttered something about having more than
enough to do already.

I had not been mistaken as to the size of the men’s yard: it was
certainly not more than twenty yards deep and fifteen wide. By the
distinctness with which the shouts of _les femmes_ reached my ears I
perceived that the two _cours_ adjoined. They were separated by a stone
wall ten feet in height, which I had already remarked (while _en route_
to _les douches_) as forming one end of the _cour des femmes_. The
men’s _cour_ had another stone wall slightly higher than the first, and
which ran parallel to it; the two remaining sides, which were property
ends, were made by the familiar barbed-wire.

The furniture of the _cour_ was simple: in the middle of the further
end, a wooden sentry-box was placed just inside the wire; a curious
contrivance, which I discovered to be a sister to the booth upstairs,
graced the wall on the left which separated the two _cours_, while
further up on this wall a horizontal iron bar projected from the stone
at a height of seven feet and was supported at its other end by a
wooden post, the idea apparently being to give the prisoners a little
taste of gymnastics; a minute wooden shed filled the right upper corner
and served secondarily as a very partial shelter for the men and
primarily as a stable for an extraordinary water-wagon, composed of a
wooden barrel on two wheels with shafts which would not possibly
accommodate anything larger than a diminutive donkey (but in which I
myself was to walk not infrequently, as it proved); parallel to the
second stone wall, but at a safe distance from it, stretched a couple
of iron girders serving as a barbarously cold seat for any unfortunate
who could not remain on his feet the entire time; on the ground close
by the shed lay amusement devices numbers two and three—a huge iron
cannon-ball and the six-foot iron axle of a departed wagon—for testing
the strength of the prisoners and beguiling any time which might lie
heavily on their hands after they had regaled themselves with the
horizontal bar; and finally, a dozen mangy apple-trees, fighting for
their very lives in the angry soil, proclaimed to all the world that
the _cour_ itself was in reality a _verger_.

“Les pommiers sont pleins de pommes;
Allons au verger, Simone….”


A description of the _cour_ would be incomplete without an enumeration
of the manifold duties of the _planton_ in charge, which were as
follows: to prevent the men from using the horizontal bar, except for
chinning, since if you swung yourself upon it you could look over the
wall into the women’s _cour_; to see that no one threw anything over
the wall into said _cour_; to dodge the cannon-ball which had a
mysterious habit of taking advantage of the slope of the ground and
bounding along at a prodigious rate of speed straight for the
sentry-box; to watch closely anyone who inhabited the _cabinet
d’aisance_, lest he should make use of it to vault over the wall; to
see that no one stood on the girders, for a similar reason; to keep
watch over anyone who entered the shed; to see that everyone urinated
properly against the wall in the general vicinity of the cabinet; to
protect the apple-trees into which well-aimed pieces of wood and stone
were continually flying and dislodging the sacred fruit; to mind that
no one entered or exited by the gate in the upper fence without
authority; to report any signs, words, tokens, or other immoralities
exchanged by prisoners with girls sitting in the windows of the women’s
wing (it was from one of these windows that I had recently received my
salutation), also names of said girls, it being forbidden to exhibit
any part of the female person at a window while the males were on
promenade; to quell all fights and especially to prevent people from
using the wagon axle as a weapon of defense or offense; and last, to
keep an eye on the sweeper when he and his wheelbarrow made use of a
secondary gate situated in the fence at the further end, not far from
the sentry-box, to dump themselves.

Having acquainted me with the various _défendus_ which limited the
activities of a man on promenade, my friends proceeded to enliven the
otherwise somewhat tedious morning by shattering one after another all
rules and regulations. Fritz, having chinned himself fifteen times,
suddenly appeared astride of the bar, evoking a reprimand; Pompom
bowled the _planton_ with the cannon-ball, apologising in profuse and
vile French; Harree the Hollander tossed the wagon-axle lightly half
the length of the _cour_, missing The Bear by an inch; The Bear bided
his time and cleverly hurled a large stick into one of the holy trees,
bringing to the ground a withered apple for which at least twenty
people fought for several minutes; and so on. The most open gestures
were indulged in for the benefit of several girls who had braved the
official wrath and were enjoying the morning at their windows. The
girders were used as a race-track. The beams supporting the shed-roof
were shinned. The water-wagon was dislocated from its proper position.
The cabinet and urinal were misused. The gate was continually admitting
and emitting persons who said they were thirsty, and must get a drink
at a tub of water which stood around the corner. A letter was
surreptitiously thrown over the wall into the _cour des femmes_.

The _planton_ who suffered all these indignities was a solemn youth
with wise eyes situated very far apart in a mealy expressionless
ellipse of face, to the lower end of which clung a piece of down,
exactly like a feather sticking to an egg. The rest of him was fairly
normal with the exception of his hands, which were not mates; the left
being considerably larger, and made of wood.

I was at first somewhat startled by this eccentricity; but soon learned
that with the exception of two or three, who formed the _Surveillant’s_
permanent staff and of whom the beefy one was a shining example, all
the _plantons_ were supposed to be unhealthy; they were indeed the
disabled whom _le gouvernement français_ sent from time to time to La
Ferté and similar institutions for a little outing, and as soon as they
had recovered their health under these salubrious influences they were
shipped back to do their bit for world-safety, democracy, freedom,
etc., in the trenches. I also learned that, of all the ways of
attaining _cabinot_, by far the simplest was to apply to a _planton_,
particularly to a permanent _planton_, say the beefy one (who was
reputed to be peculiarly touchy on this point) the term _embusqué_.
This method never failed. To its efficacy many of the men and more of
the girls (by whom the _plantons_, owing to their habit of taking
advantage of the weaker sex at every opportunity, were even more
despised) attested by not infrequent spasms of consumptive coughing,
which could be plainly heard from the further end of one _cour_ to the
other.

In a little over two hours I learned an astonishing lot about La Ferté
itself: it was a co-educational receiving station whither were sent
from various parts of France (a) males suspected of espionage and (b)
females of a well-known type found in the zone of the armies. It was
pointed out to me that the task of finding such members of the human
race was _pas difficile:_ in the case of the men, any foreigner would
do provided his country was neutral (e.g. Holland); as for the girls,
inasmuch as the armies of the Allies were continually retreating, the
_zone des armées_ (particularly in the case of Belgium) was always
including new cities, whose _petites femmes_ became automatically
subject to arrest. It was not to be supposed that all the women of La
Ferté were _putains_: there were a large number of respectable women,
the wives of prisoners, who met their husbands at specified times on
the floor below the men’s quarters, whither man and woman were duly and
separately conducted by _plantons_. In this case no charges had been
preferred against the women; they were voluntary prisoners, who had
preferred to freedom this living in proximity to their husbands. Many
of them had children; some babies. In addition there were certain
_femmes honnêtes_ whose nationality, as in the case of the men, had
cost them their liberty; Marguerite the washerwoman, for example, was a
German.

La Ferté Macé was not properly speaking a prison, but a Porte or
Detention Camp: that is to say, persons sent to it were held for a
Commission, composed of an official, a lawyer, and a captain of
_gendarmes_, which inspected the Camp and passed upon each case in turn
for the purpose of determining the guiltiness of the suspected party.
If the latter were found guilty by the Commission, he or she was sent
off to a regular prison camp for the duration of the war; if not
guilty, he or she was (in theory) set free. The Commission came to La
Ferté once every three months. It should be added that there were
prisoners who had passed the Commission, two, three, four, and even
five times, without any appreciable result; there were _prisonnierès_
who had remained in La Ferté a year, and even eighteen months.

The authorities at La Ferté consisted of the _Directeur_, or general
overlord, the _Surveillant_, who had the _plantons_ (orderlies) under
him and was responsible to the _Directeur_ for the administration of
the camp, and the _Gestionnaire_ (who kept the accounts). As assistant,
the _Surveillant_ had a mail clerk who acted as translator on occasion.
Twice a week the camp was visited by a regular French army doctor
(_médecin major_) who was supposed to prescribe in severe cases and to
give the women venereal inspection at regular intervals. The daily
routine of attending to minor ailments and injuries was in the hands of
Monsieur Ree-shar (Richard), who knew probably less about medicine than
any man living and was an ordinary prisoner like all of us, but whose
impeccable conduct merited cosy quarters. A sweeper was appointed from
time to time by the _Surveillant_, acting for the _Directeur_, from the
inhabitants of La Ferté; as was also a cook’s assistant. The regular
cook was a fixture, and a Boche like the other fixtures, Marguerite and
Richard. This fact might seem curious were it not that the manner,
appearance and actions of the _Directeur_ himself proved beyond a
shadow of a doubt that he was all which the term Boche could possibly
imply.

“He’s a son-of-a-bitch,” B. said heartily. “They took me up to him when
I came two days ago. As soon as he saw me he bellowed: ‘_Imbécile et
inchrétien!_’; then he called me a great lot of other things, including
Shame of my country, Traitor to the sacred cause of Liberty,
Contemptible coward and Vile sneaking spy. When he got all through I
said ‘I don’t understand French.’ You should have seen him then.”

Separation of the sexes was enforced, not, it is true, with success,
but with a commendable ferocity. The punishments for both men and girls
were dry bread and _cabinot_.

“What on earth is _cabinot?_” I demanded.

There were various _cabinots_: each sex had its regular _cabinot_, and
there were certain extra ones. B. knew all about them from Harree and
Pompom, who spent nearly all their time in the _cabinot_. They were
rooms about nine feet square and six feet high. There was no light and
no floor, and the ground (three were on the ground floor) was always
wet and often a good many inches under water. The occupant on entering
was searched for tobacco, deprived of his or her mattress and blanket,
and invited to sleep on the ground on some planks. One didn’t need to
write a letter to a member of the opposite sex to get _cabinot_, or
even to call a _planton embusqué_—there was a woman, a foreigner, who,
instead of sending a letter to her embassy through the bureau (where
all letters were read by the mail clerk to make sure that they said
nothing disagreeable about the authorities or conditions of La Ferté)
tried to smuggle it outside, and got twenty-eight days of _cabinot_.
She had previously written three times, handing the letters to the
_Surveillant_, as per regulations, and had received no reply. Fritz,
who had no idea why he was arrested and was crazy to get in touch with
his embassy, had likewise written several letters, taking the utmost
care to state the facts only and always handing them in; but he had
never received a word in return. The obvious inference was that letters
from a foreigner to his embassy were duly accepted by the _Surveillant_
(Warden), but rarely, if ever, left La Ferté.

B. and I were conversing merrily à propos the God-sent miracle of our
escape from Vingt-et-Un, when a benign-faced personage of about fifty
with sparse greyish hair and a Benjamin Franklin expression appeared on
the other side of the fence, from the direction of the door through
which I had passed after bumping the beefy bull. “_Planton_” it cried
heavily to the wooden-handed one, “Two men to go get water.” Harree and
Pompom were already at the gate with the archaic water-wagon, the
former pushing from behind and the latter in the shafts. The guardian
of the _cour_ walked up and opened the gate for them, after
ascertaining that another _planton_ was waiting at the corner of the
building to escort them on their mission. A little way from the _cour_,
the stone wall (which formed one of its boundaries and which ran
parallel to the other stone wall dividing the two _cours_) met the
prison building; and here was a huge double door, twice padlocked,
through which the waterseekers passed on to the street. There was a
sort of hydrant up the street a few hundred yards, I was told. The cook
(Benjamin F., that is) required from three to six wagonfuls of water
twice a day, and in reward for the labour involved in its capture was
in the habit of giving a cup of coffee to the captors. I resolved that
I would seek water at the earliest opportunity.

Harree and Pompom had completed their third and final trip and returned
from the kitchen, smacking their lips and wiping their mouths with the
backs of their hands. I was gazing airily into the muddy sky, when a
roar issued from the door-way:

“_Montez les hommes!_” or “Send the men up!”

It was the beefy-necked. We filed from the _cour_, through the door,
past a little window which I was told belonged to the kitchen, down the
clammy corridor, up the three flights of stairs, to the door of The
Enormous Room. Padlocks were unlocked, chains rattled, and the door
thrown open. We entered. The Enormous Room received us in silence. The
door was slammed and locked behind us by the _planton_, whom we could
hear descending the gnarled and filthy stairs.

In the course of a half-hour, which time, as I was informed, intervened
between the just-ended morning promenade and the noon meal which was
the next thing on the program, I gleaned considerable information
concerning the daily schedule of La Ferté. A typical day was divided by
planton-cries as follows:

“_Café_,” “_Corvée d’eau_,” “_Nettoyage de Chambre_,” “_Montez les
Hommes_,” “_A la soupe les hommes_.”

The most terrible cry of all, and which was not included in the regular
program of planton-cries, consisted of the words:

“_Aux douches les hommes_”—when all, sick, dead and dying not excepted,
descended to the baths. Although _les douches_ came only once in 15
days, such was the terror they inspired that it was necessary for the
_planton_ to hunt under mattresses for people who would have preferred
death itself.

Upon remarking that _corvée d’eau_ must be excessively disagreeable, I
was informed that it had its bright side, viz., that in going to and
from the sewer one could easily exchange a furtive signal with the
women who always took pains to be at their windows at that moment.
Influenced perhaps by this, Harree and Pompom were in the habit of
doing their friends’ _corvées_ for a consideration. The girls, I was
further instructed, had their _corvée_ (as well as their meals) just
after the men; and the miraculous stupidity of the _plantons_ had been
known to result in the coincidence of the two.

At this point somebody asked me how I had enjoyed my shower?

I was replying in terms of unmeasured opprobrium when I was interrupted
by that gruesome clanking and rattling which announced the opening of
the door. A moment later it was thrown wide, and the beefy-neck stood
in the doorway, a huge bunch of keys in his paw, and shouted:

“_A la soupe les hommes._”

The cry was lost in a tremendous confusion, a reckless
thither-and-hithering of humanity, everyone trying to be at the door,
spoon in hand, before his neighbour. B. said calmly, extracting his own
spoon from beneath his mattress on which we were seated: “They’ll give
you yours downstairs and when you get it you want to hide it or it’ll
be pinched”—and in company with Monsieur Bragard, who had refused the
morning promenade, and whose gentility would not permit him to hurry
when it was a question of such a low craving as hunger, we joined the
dancing roaring throng at the door. I was not too famished myself to be
unimpressed by the instantaneous change which had come over The
Enormous Room’s occupants. Never did Circe herself cast upon men so
bestial an enchantment. Among these faces convulsed with utter
animalism I scarcely recognised my various acquaintances. The
transformation produced by the _planton’s_ shout was not merely
amazing; it was uncanny, and not a little thrilling. These eyes
bubbling with lust, obscene grins sprouting from contorted lips, bodies
unclenching and clenching in unctuous gestures of complete savagery,
convinced me by a certain insane beauty. Before the arbiter of their
destinies some thirty creatures, hideous and authentic, poised,
cohering in a sole chaos of desire; a fluent and numerous cluster of
vital inhumanity. As I contemplated this ferocious and uncouth miracle,
this beautiful manifestation of the sinister alchemy of hunger, I felt
that the last vestige of individualism was about utterly to disappear,
wholly abolished in a gambolling and wallowing throb.

The beefy-neck bellowed:

“Are you all here?”

A shrill roar of language answered. He looked contemptuously around
him, upon the thirty clamouring faces each of which wanted to eat
him—puttees, revolver and all. Then he cried:

“_Allez, descendez._”

Squirming, jostling, fighting, roaring, we poured slowly through the
doorway. Ridiculously. Horribly. I felt like a glorious microbe in huge
absurd din irrevocably swathed. B. was beside me. A little ahead
Monsieur Auguste’s voice protested. Count Bragard brought up the rear.

When we reached the corridor nearly all the breath was knocked out of
me. The corridor being wider than the stairs allowed me to inhale and
look around. B. was yelling in my ear:

“Look at the Hollanders and the Belgians! They’re always ahead when it
comes to food!”

Sure enough: John the Bathman, Harree and Pompom were leading this
extraordinary procession. Fritz was right behind them, however, and
pressing the leaders hard. I heard Monsieur Auguste crying in his
child’s voice:

“If every-body goes slow-er we will ar-rive soon-er. You mustn’t act
like that!”

Then suddenly the roar ceased. The mêlée integrated. We were marching
in orderly ranks. B. said:

“The Surveillant!”

At the end of the corridor, opposite the kitchen window, there was a
flight of stairs. On the third stair from the bottom stood (teetering a
little slowly back and forth, his lean hands joined behind him and
twitching regularly, a kepi tilted forward on his cadaverous head so
that its visor almost hid the weak eyes sunkenly peering from under
droopy eyebrows, his pompous rooster-like body immaculately attired in
a shiny uniform, his puttees sleeked, his cross polished)—The Fencer.
There was a renovated look about him which made me laugh. Also his pose
was ludicrously suggestive of Napoleon reviewing the armies of France.

Our column’s first rank moved by him. I expected it to continue ahead
through the door and into the open air, as I had myself done in going
from _les douches_ to _le cour;_ but it turned a sharp right and then
sharp left, and I perceived a short hall, almost hidden by the stairs.
In a moment I had passed The Fencer myself and entered the hall. In
another moment I was in a room, pretty nearly square, filled with rows
of pillars. On turning into the hall the column had come almost to a
standstill. I saw that the reason for this slowing-down lay in the fact
that on entering the room every man in turn passed a table and received
a piece of bread from the chef. When B. and I came opposite the table
the dispenser of bread smiled pleasantly and nodded to B., then
selected a large hunk and pushed it rapidly into B.’s hands with an air
of doing something which he shouldn’t. B. introduced me, whereupon the
smile and selection was repeated.

“He thinks I’m a German,” B. explained in a whisper, “and that you are
a German too.” Then aloud, to the cook: “My friend here needs a spoon.
He just got here this morning and they haven’t given him one.”

The excellent person at the bread table hereupon said to me: “You shall
go to the window and say I tell you to ask for spoon and you will catch
one spoon”—and I broke through the waiting line, approached the
kitchen-window, and demanded of a roguish face within:

“A spoon, please.”

The roguish face, which had been singing in a high faint voice to
itself, replied critically but not unkindly:

“You’re a new one?”

I said that I was, that I had arrived late last night.

It disappeared, reappeared, and handed me a tin spoon and cup, saying:

“You haven’t a cup?”—“No” I said.

“Here. Take this. Quick.” Nodding in the direction of the Surveillant,
who was standing all this time on the stairs behind me.

I had expected from the cook’s phrase that something would be thrown at
me which I should have to catch, and was accordingly somewhat relieved
at the true state of affairs. On re-entering the _salle à manger_ I was
greeted by many cries and wavings, and looking in their direction
perceived everybody uproariously seated at wooden benches which were
placed on either side of an enormous wooden table. There was a tiny gap
on one bench where a place had been saved for me by B., with the
assistance of Monsieur Auguste, Count Bragard, Harree and several other
fellow-convicts. In a moment I had straddled the bench and was
occupying the gap, spoon and cup in hand, and ready for anything.

The din was perfectly terrific. It had a minutely large quality. Here
and there, in a kind of sonal darkness, solid sincere unintelligible
absurd wisps of profanity heavily flickered. Optically the phenomenon
was equally remarkable: seated waggingly swaying corpselike figures,
swaggering, pounding with their little spoons, roaring, hoarse,
unkempt. Evidently Monsieur le Surveillant had been forgotten. All at
once the roar bulged unbearably. The roguish man, followed by the
_chef_ himself, entered with a suffering waddle, each of them bearing a
huge bowl of steaming something. At least six people immediately rose,
gesturing and imploring: “_Ici_”—“_Mais non, ici_”—“_Mettez par ici_”—

The bearers plumped their burdens carefully down, one at the head of
the table and one in the middle. The men opposite the bowls stood up.
Every man seized the empty plate in front of him and shoved it into his
neighbour’s hand; the plates moved toward the bowls, were filled amid
uncouth protestations and accusations—“_Mettez plus que ça_”—“_C’est
pas juste, alors_”—“_Donnez-moi encore de pommes_”—“_Nom de Dieu, il
n’y a pas assez_”—“_Cochon, qu’est-ce qu’il veut?_”—“Shut
up”—“_Gott-ver-dummer_”—and returned one by one. As each man received
his own, he fell upon it with a sudden guzzle.

Eventually, in front of me, solemnly sat a faintly-smoking
urine-coloured circular broth, in which soggily hung half-suspended
slabs of raw potato. Following the example of my neighbours, I too
addressed myself to _La Soupe_. I found her luke-warm, completely
flavourless. I examined the hunk of bread. It was almost bluish in
colour; in taste mouldy, slightly sour. “If you crumb some into the
soup,” remarked B., who had been studying my reactions from the corner
of his eye, “they both taste better.” I tried the experiment. It was a
complete success. At least one felt as if one were getting nourishment.
Between gulps I smelled the bread furtively. It smelled rather much
like an old attic in which kites and other toys gradually are forgotten
in a gentle darkness.

B. and I were finishing our soup together when behind and somewhat to
the left there came the noise of a lock being manipulated. I turned and
saw in one corner of the _salle à manger_ a little door, shaking
mysteriously. Finally it was thrown open, revealing a sort of minute
bar and a little closet filled with what appeared to be groceries and
tobacco; and behind the bar, standing in the closet, a husky,
competent-looking lady. “It’s the canteen,” B. said. We rose, spoon in
hand and breadhunk stuck on spoon, and made our way to the lady. I had,
naturally, no money; but B. reassured me that before the day was over I
should see the Gestionnaire and make arrangements for drawing on the
supply of ready cash which the _gendarmes_ who took me from Gré had
confided to The Surveillant’s care; eventually I could also draw on my
account with Norton-Harjes in Paris; meantime he had _quelques sous_
which might well go into chocolate and cigarettes. The large lady had a
pleasant quietness about her, a sort of simplicity, which made me
extremely desirous of complying with B.’s suggestion. Incidentally I
was feeling somewhat uncertain in the region of the stomach, due to the
unique quality of the lunch which I had just enjoyed, and I brightened
at the thought of anything as solid as chocolate. Accordingly we
purchased (or rather B. did) a _paquet jaune_ and a cake of something
which was not Meunier. And the remaining _sous_ we squandered on a
glass apiece of red acrid _pinard_, gravely and with great happiness
pledging the hostess of the occasion and then each other.

With the exception of ourselves hardly anyone patronized the canteen,
noting which I felt somewhat conspicuous. When, however, Harree Pompom
and John the Bathman came rushing up and demanded cigarettes my fears
were dispelled. Moreover the _pinard_ was excellent.

“Come on! Arrange yourselves!” the bull-neck cried hoarsely as the five
of us were lighting up; and we joined the line of fellow-prisoners with
their breads and spoons, gaping, belching, trumpeting fraternally, by
the doorway.

“_Tout le monde en haut!_” this _planton_ roared.

Slowly we filed through the tiny hall, past the stairs (empty now of
their Napoleonic burden), down the corridor, up the creaking gnarled
damp flights, and (after the inevitable pause in which the escort
rattled chains and locks) into The Enormous Room.

This would be about ten thirty.

Just what I tasted, did, smelled, saw, and heard, not to mention
touched, between ten thirty and the completion of the evening meal
(otherwise the four o’clock soup) I am quite at a loss to say. Whether
it was that glass of _pinard_ (plus, or rather times, the astonishing
exhaustion bequeathed me by my journey of the day before) which caused
me to enter temporarily the gates of forgetfulness, or whether the
sheer excitement attendant upon my ultra-novel surroundings proved too
much for an indispensable part of my so-called mind—I do not in the
least know. I am fairly certain that I went on afternoon promenade.
After which I must surely have mounted to await my supper in The
Enormous Room. Whence (after the due and proper interval) I doubtless
descended to the clutches of _La Soupe Extraordinaire_… yes, for I
perfectly recall the cry which made me suddenly to re-enter the
dimension of distinctness … and by Jove I had just finished a glass of
_pinard_… somebody must have treated me … we were standing together,
spoon in hand … when we heard—

“_A la promenade_,” … we issued _en queue_, firmly grasping our spoons
and bread, through the dining-room door. Turning right we were emitted,
by the door opposite the kitchen, from the building itself into the
open air. A few steps and we passed through the little gate in the
barbed wire fence of the _cour_.

Greatly refreshed by my second introduction to the canteen, and with
the digestion of the somewhat extraordinary evening meal apparently
assured, I gazed almost intelligently around me. Count Bragard had
declined the evening promenade in favour of The Enormous Room, but I
perceived in the crowd the now familiar faces of the three
Hollanders—John, Harree and Pompom—likewise of The Bear, Monsieur
Auguste, and Fritz. In the course of the next hour I had become, if not
personally, at least optically acquainted with nearly a dozen others.

Somewhat overawed by the animals Harree and Pompom (but nevertheless
managing to overawe a goodly portion of his fellow-captives) an
extraordinary human being paced the _cour_. On gazing for the first
time directly at him I experienced a feeling of nausea. A figure
inclined to corpulence, dressed with care, remarkable only above the
neck—and then what a head! It was large, and had a copious mop of limp
hair combed back from the high forehead—hair of a disagreeable blond
tint, dutch-cut behind, falling over the pinkish soft neck almost to
the shoulders. In this pianist’s or artist’s hair, which shook en masse
when the owner walked, two large and outstanding and altogether brutal
white ears tried to hide themselves. The face, a cross between classic
Greek and Jew, had a Reynard expression, something distinctly wily and
perfectly disagreeable. An equally with the hair blond moustache—or
rather mustachios projectingly important—waved beneath the prominent
nostrils, and served to partially conceal the pallid mouth, weak and
large, whose lips assumed from time to time a smile which had something
almost foetal about it. Over the even weaker chin was disposed a blond
goatee. The cheeks were fatty. The continually perspiring forehead
exhibited innumerable pinkish pock-marks. In conversing with a
companion this being emitted a disgusting smoothness, his very gestures
were oily like his skin. He wore a pair of bloated wristless hands, the
knuckles lost in fat, with which he smoothed the air from time to time.
He was speaking low and effortless French, completely absorbed in the
developing ideas which issued fluently from his mustachios. About him
there clung an aura of cringing. His hair whiskers and neck looked as
if they were trick neck whiskers and hair, as if they might at any
moment suddenly disintegrate, as if the smoothness of his eloquence
alone kept them in place.

We called him Judas.

Beside him, clumsily keeping the pace but not the step, was a tallish
effeminate person whose immaculate funereal suit hung loosely upon an
aged and hurrying anatomy. He wore a big black cap on top of his
haggard and remarkably clean-shaven face, the most prominent feature of
which was a red nose, which sniffed a little now and then as if its
owner was suffering from a severe cold. This person emanated age,
neatness and despair. Aside from the nose which compelled immediate
attention, his face consisted of a few large planes loosely juxtaposed
and registering pathos. His motions were without grace. He had a
certain refinement. He could not have been more than forty-five. There
was worry on every inch of him. Possibly he thought that he might die.
B. said “He’s a Belgian, a friend of Count Bragard, his name is
Monsieur Pet-airs.” From time to time Monsieur Pet-airs remarked
something delicately and pettishly in a gentle and weak voice. His
adam’s-apple, at such moments, jumped about in a longish slack wrinkled
skinny neck which was like the neck of a turkey. To this turkey the
approach of Thanksgiving inspired dread. From time to time M. Pet-airs
looked about him sidewise as if he expected to see a hatchet. His hands
were claws, kind, awkward and nervous. They twitched. The bony and
wrinkled things looked as if they would like to close quickly upon a
throat.

B. called my attention to a figure squatting in the middle of the
_cour_ with his broad back against one of the more miserable trees.
This figure was clothed in a remarkably picturesque manner: it wore a
dark sombrero-like hat with a large drooping brim, a bright red gipsy
shirt of some remarkably fine material with huge sleeves loosely
falling, and baggy corduroy trousers whence escaped two brown, shapely,
naked feet. On moving a little I discovered a face—perhaps the
handsomest face that I have ever seen, of a gold brown color, framed in
an amazingly large and beautiful black beard. The features were finely
formed and almost fluent, the eyes soft and extraordinarily sensitive,
the mouth delicate and firm beneath a black moustache which fused with
the silky and wonderful darkness falling upon the breast. The face
contained a beauty and dignity which, as I first saw it, annihilated
the surrounding tumult without an effort. Around the carefully formed
nostrils there was something almost of contempt. The cheeks had known
suns of which I might not think. The feet had travelled nakedly in
countries not easily imagined. Seated gravely in the mud and noise of
the _cour_, under the pitiful and scraggly _pommier_… behind the eyes
lived a world of complete strangeness and silence. The composure of the
body was graceful and Jovelike. This being might have been a prophet
come out of a country nearer to the sun. Perhaps a god who had lost his
road and allowed himself to be taken prisoner by _le gouvernement
français_. At least a prince of a dark and desirable country, a king
over a gold-skinned people who would return when he wished to his
fountains and his houris. I learned upon inquiry that he travelled in
various countries with a horse and cart and his wife and children,
selling bright colours to the women and men of these countries. As it
turned out, he was one of the Delectable Mountains; to discover which I
had come a long and difficult way. Wherefore I shall tell you no more
about him for the present, except that his name was Joseph Demestre.

We called him The Wanderer.

I was still wondering at my good luck in occupying the same miserable
yard with this exquisite personage when a hoarse, rather thick voice
shouted from the gate: “_L’américain!_”

It was a _planton_, in fact the chief _planton_ for whom all ordinary
_plantons_ had unutterable respect and whom all mere men unutterably
hated. It was the _planton_ into whom I had had the distinguished
honour of bumping shortly after my visit to _le bain_.

The Hollanders and Fritz were at the gate in a mob, all shouting
“Which” in four languages.

This _planton_ did not deign to notice them. He repeated roughly
“_L’américain._” Then, yielding a point to their frenzied entreaties:
“_Le nouveau_.”

B. said to me “Probably he’s going to take you to the Gestionnaire.
You’re supposed to see him when you arrive. He’s got your money and
will keep it for you, and give you an allowance twice a week. You can’t
draw more than 20 francs. I’ll hold your bread and spoon.”

“Where the devil is the American?” cried the _planton_.

“Here I am.”

“Follow me.”

I followed his back and rump and holster through the little gate in the
barbed wire fence and into the building, at which point he commanded
“Proceed.”

I asked “Where?”

“Straight ahead” he said angrily.

I proceeded. “Left!” he cried. I turned. A door confronted me.
“_Entrez_,” he commanded. I did. An unremarkable looking gentleman in a
French uniform, sitting at a sort of table. “_Monsieur le médecin, le
nouveau._” The doctor got up. “Open your shirt.” I did. “Take down your
pants.” I did. “All right.” Then, as the _planton_ was about to escort
me from the room: “English?” he asked with curiosity. “No” I said,
“American.” “_Vraiment_”—he contemplated me with attention. “South
American are you?” “United States” I explained. “_Vraiment_”—he looked
curiously at me, not disagreeably in the least. “_Pourquoi vous êtes
ici?_” “I don’t know” I said smiling pleasantly, “except that my friend
wrote some letters which were intercepted by the French censor.” “Ah,”
he remarked. “_C’est tout._”

And I departed. “Proceed!” cried the Black Holster. I retraced my
steps, and was about to exit through the door leading to the _cour_,
when “Stop! _Nom de Dieu!_ Proceed!”

I asked “Where?” completely bewildered.

“Up,” he said angrily.

I turned to the stairs on the left, and climbed.

“Not so fast there,” he roared behind me.

I slowed up. We reached the landing. I was sure that the Gestionnaire
was a very fierce man—probably a lean slight person who would rush at
me from the nearest door saying “Hands up” in French, whatever that may
be. The door opposite me stood open. I looked in. There was the
Surveillant standing, hands behind back, approvingly regarding my
progress. I was asking myself, Should I bow? when a scurrying and a
tittering made me look left, along a dark and particularly dirty hall.
Women’s voices … I almost fell with surprise. Were not those shadows’
faces peering a little boldly at me from doors? How many girls were
there—it sounded as if there were a hundred—

“_Qu’est-ce que vous faites_,” etc., and the _planton_ gave me a good
shove in the direction of another flight of stairs. I obligingly
ascended; thinking of the Surveillant as a spider, elegantly poised in
the centre of his nefarious web, waiting for a fly to make too many
struggles….

At the top of this flight I was confronted by a second hall. A shut
door indicated the existence of a being directly over the Surveillant’s
holy head. Upon this door, lest I should lose time in speculating, was
in ample letters inscribed:

GESTIONNAIRE


I felt unutterably lost. I approached the door. I even started to push
it.

“_Attends, Nom de Dieu._” The _planton_ gave me another shove, faced
the door, knocked twice, and cried in accents of profound respect:
“Monsieur le Gestionnaire”—after which he gazed at me with really
supreme contempt, his neat pig-like face becoming almost circular.

I said to myself: This Gestionnaire, whoever he is, must be a very
terrible person, a frightful person, a person utterly without mercy.

From within a heavy, stupid, pleasant voice lazily remarked:

“_Entrez._”

The _planton_ threw the door open, stood stiffly on the threshold, and
gave me the look which _plantons_ give to eggs when _plantons_ are a
little hungry.

I crossed the threshold, trembling with (let us hope) anger.

Before me, seated at a table, was a very fat personage with a black
skull cap perched upon its head. Its face was possessed of an enormous
nose, on which pince-nez precariously roosted; otherwise the face was
large, whiskered, very German and had three chins. Extraordinary
creature. Its belly, as it sat, was slightly dented by the table-top,
on which table-top rested several enormous tomes similar to those
employed by the recording angel on the Day of Judgment, an inkstand or
two, innumerable pens and pencils, and some positively fatal looking
papers. The person was dressed in worthy and semi-dismal clothes amply
cut to afford a promenade for the big stomach. The coat was of that
extremely thin black material which occasionally is affected by clerks
and dentists and more often by librarians. If ever I looked upon an
honest German jowl, or even upon a caricature thereof, I looked upon
one now. Such a round fat red pleasant beer-drinking face as reminded
me only and immediately of huge meerschaum pipes, Deutsche Verein
mottos, sudsy seidels of Wurtzburger, and Jacob Wirth’s (once upon a
time) brachwurst. Such pin-like pink merry eyes as made me think of
Kris Kringle himself. Such extraordinarily huge reddish hands as might
have grasped six seidels together in the Deutsche Küchen on 13th
street. I gasped with pleasurable relief.

Monsieur le Gestionnaire looked as if he was trying very hard, with the
aid of his beribboned glasses and librarian’s jacket (not to mention a
very ponderous gold watch-chain and locket that were supported by his
copious equator) to appear possessed of the solemnity necessarily
emanating from his lofty and responsible office. This solemnity,
however, met its Waterloo in his frank and stupid eyes, not to say his
trilogy of cheerful chins—so much so that I felt like crying “Wie
gehts!” and cracking him on his huge back. Such an animal! A contented
animal, a bulbous animal; the only living hippopotamus in captivity,
fresh from the Nile.

He contemplated me with a natural, under the circumstances, curiosity.
He even naively contemplated me. As if I were hay. My hay-coloured head
perhaps pleased him, as a hippopotamus. He would perhaps eat me. He
grunted, exposing tobacco-yellow tusks, and his tiny eyes twittered.
Finally he gradually uttered, with a thick accent, the following
extremely impressive dictum:

“_C’est l’américain._”

I felt much pleased, and said “_Oui, j’suis américain, Monsieur._”

He rolled half over backwards in his creaking chair with wonderment at
such an unexpected retort. He studied my face with a puzzled air,
appearing slightly embarrassed that before him should stand
_l’américain_ and that _l’américain_ should admit it, and that it
should all be so wonderfully clear. I saw a second dictum, even more
profound than the first, ascending from his black vest. The chain and
fob trembled with anticipation. I was wholly fascinated. What vast blob
of wisdom would find its difficult way out of him? The bulbous lips
wiggled in a pleasant smile.

“_Voo parlez français._”

This was delightful. The _planton_ behind me was obviously angered by
the congenial demeanour of Monsieur le Gestionnaire, and rasped with
his boot upon the threshold. The maps to my right and left, maps of
France, maps of the Mediterranean, of Europe, even, were abashed. A
little anaemic and humble biped whom I had not previously noted, as he
stood in one corner with a painfully deferential expression, looked all
at once relieved. I guessed, and correctly guessed, that this little
thing was the translator of La Ferté. His weak face wore glasses of the
same type as the hippopotamus’, but without a huge black ribbon. I
decided to give him a tremor; and said to the hippo “_Un peu,
Monsieur_,” at which the little thing looked sickly.

The hippopotamus benevolently remarked “_Voo parlez bien_,” and his
glasses fell off. He turned to the watchful _planton_:

“_Voo poovez aller. Je vooz appelerai._”

The watchful _planton_ did a sort of salute and closed the door after
him. The skullcapped dignitary turned to his papers and began mouthing
them with his huge hands, grunting pleasantly. Finally he found one,
and said lazily:

“_De quelle endroit que vooz êtes?_”

“_De Massachusetts_,” said I.

He wheeled round and stared dumbly at the weak faced one, who looked at
a complete loss, but managed to stammer simperingly that it was a part
of the United States.

“UH.” The hippopotamus said.

Then he remarked that I had been arrested, and I agreed that I had been
arrested.

Then he said “Have you got any money?” and before I could answer
clambered heavily to his feet and, leaning over the table before which
I stood, punched me gently.

“Uh,” said the hippopotamus, sat down, and put on his glasses.

“I have your money here,” he said. “You are allowed to draw a little
from time to time. You may draw 20 francs, if you like. You may draw it
twice a week.”

“I should like to draw 20 francs now” I said, “in order to buy
something at the canteen.”

“You will give me a receipt,” said the hippopotamus. “You want to draw
20 francs now, quite so.” He began, puffing and grunting, to make
handwriting of a peculiarly large and somewhat loose variety.

The weak face now stepped forward, and asked me gently: “Hugh er a
merry can?”—so I carried on a brilliant conversation in pidgeon English
about my relatives and America until interrupted by

“Uh.”

The hip had finished.

“Sign your name, here,” he said, and I did. He looked about in one of
the tomes and checked something opposite my name, which I enjoyed
seeing in the list of inmates. It had been spelled, erased, and
re-spelled several times.

Monsieur le Gestionnaire contemplated my signature. Then he looked up,
smiled and nodded recognition to someone behind me. I turned. There
stood (having long since noiselessly entered) The Fencer Himself,
nervously clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back and
regarding me with approval, or as a keeper regards some rare monkey
newly forwarded from its habitat by Hagenbeck.

The hippo pulled out a drawer. He found, after hunting, some notes. He
counted two off, licking his big thumb with a pompous gesture, and
having recounted them passed them heavily to me. I took them as a
monkey takes a cocoanut.

“Do you wish?”—the Gestionnaire nodded toward me, addressing the
Fencer.

“No, no” the Fencer said bowingly. “I have talked to him already.”

“Call that _planton!_” cried Monsieur le Gestionnaire, to the little
thing. The little thing ran out dutifully and called in a weak voice
“_Planton!_”

A gruff but respectful “_Oui_” boomed from below-stairs. In a moment
the _planton_ of _plantons_ had respectfully entered.

“The promenade being over, you can take him to the men’s room,” said
the Surveillant, as the Hippo (immensely relieved and rather proud of
himself) collapsed in his creaking chair.

Feeling like a suit-case in the clutches of a porter, I obediently
preceded my escort down two flights, first having bowed to the
hippopotamus and said “_Merci_”—to which courtesy the Hippo paid no
attention. As we went along the dank hall on the ground floor, I
regretted that no whispers and titters had greeted my descent. Probably
the furious _planton_ had seen to it that _les femmes_ kept their rooms
in silence. We ascended the three flights at the farther end of the
corridor, the _planton_ of all _plantons_ unlocked and unbolted the
door at the top landing, and I was swallowed by The Enormous Room.

I made for B., in my excitement allowing myself to wave the bank-notes.
Instantly a host had gathered at my side. On my way to my bed—a
distance of perhaps thirty feet—I was patted on the back by Harree,
Pompom and Bathhouse John, congratulated by Monsieur Auguste, and
saluted by Fritz. Arriving, I found myself the centre of a stupendous
crowd. People who had previously had nothing to say to me, who had even
sneered at my unwashed and unshaven exterior, now addressed me in terms
of more than polite interest. Judas himself stopped in a promenade of
the room, eyed me a moment, hastened smoothly to my vicinity, and made
a few oily remarks of a pleasant nature. Simultaneously by Monsieur
Auguste Harree and Fritz I was advised to hide my money and hide it
well. There were people, you know … who didn’t hesitate, you
understand…. I understood, and to the vast disappointment of the
clamorous majority reduced my wealth to its lowest terms and crammed it
in my trousers, stuffing several trifles of a bulky nature on top of
it. Then I gazed quietly around with a William S. Hart expression
calculated to allay any undue excitement. One by one the curious and
enthusiastic faded from me, and I was left with the few whom I already
considered my friends; with which few B. and myself proceeded to wile
away the time remaining before _Lumières Éteintes_.

Incidentally, I exchanged (in the course of the next two hours) a
considerable mass of two legged beings for a number of extremely
interesting individuals. Also, in that somewhat limited period of time,
I gained all sorts of highly enlightening information concerning the
lives, habits and likes of half a dozen of as fine companions as it has
ever been my luck to meet or, so far as I can now imagine, ever will
be. In prison one learns several million things—if one is _l’américain_
from _Mass-a-chu-setts_. When the ominous and awe-inspiring rattle on
the further side of the locked door announced that the captors were
come to bid the captives good night, I was still in the midst of
conversation and had been around the world a number of times. At the
clanking sound our little circle centripetally disintegrated, as if by
sheer magic; and I was left somewhat dizzily to face a renewal of
reality.

The door shot wide. The _planton’s_ almost indistinguishable figure in
the doorway told me that the entire room was dark. I had not noticed
the darkness. Somebody had placed a candle (which I recalled having
seen on a table in the middle of the room when I looked up once or
twice during the conversation) on a little shelf hard by the cabinet.
There had been men playing at cards by this candle—now everybody was
quietly reposing upon the floor along three sides of The Enormous Room.
The _planton_ entered. Walked over to the light. Said something about
everybody being present, and was answered by a number of voices in a
more or less profane affirmative. Strutted to and fro, kicked the
cabinet, flashed an electric torch, and walked up the room examining
each _paillasse_ to make sure it had an occupant. Crossed the room at
the upper end. Started down on my side. The white circle was in my
eyes. The _planton_ stopped. I stared stupidly and wearily into the
glare. The light moved all over me and my bed. The rough voice behind
the glare said:

“_Vous êtes le nouveau?_”

Monsieur Auguste, from my left, said quietly:

“_Oui, c’est le nouveau._”

The holder of the torch grunted, and (after pausing a second at B.’s
bed to inspect a picture of perfect innocence) banged out through the
door which whanged to behind him and another _planton_, of whose
presence I had been hitherto unaware. A perfect symphony of “_Bonne
nuits_” “_Dormez biens_” and other affectionate admonitions greeted the
exeunt of the authorities. They were advised by various parts of the
room in divers tongues to dream of their wives, to be careful of
themselves in bed, to avoid catching cold, and to attend to a number of
personal wants before retiring. The symphony gradually collapsed,
leaving me sitting in a state of complete wonderment, dead tired and
very happy, upon my _paillasse_.

“I think I’ll turn in” I said to the neighbouring darkness.

“That’s what I’m doing” B.’s voice said.

“By God” I said, “this is the finest place I’ve ever been in my life.”

“It’s the finest place in the world” said B.’s voice.

“Thank Heaven, we’re out of A.’s way and the —— _Section Sanitaire_,” I
grunted as I placed my boots where a pillow might have been imagined.

“Amen” B.’s voice said.

“If you put your shoes un-der your mat-tress” Monsieur Auguste’s voice
said, “you’ll sleep well.”

I thanked him for the suggestion, and did so. I reclined in an ecstasy
of happiness and weariness. There could be nothing better than this. To
sleep.

“Got a _gottverdummer_ cigarette?” Harree’s voice asked of Fritz.

“No bloody fear,” Fritz’s voice replied coolly.

Snores had already begun in various keys at various distances in
various directions. The candle flickered a little; as if darkness and
itself were struggling to the death, and darkness were winning.

“I’ll get a chew from John” Harree’s voice said.

Three or four _paillasses_ away, a subdued conversation was proceeding.
I found myself listening sleepily.

“_Et puis_,” a voice said, “_je suis reformé…._”




V.
A GROUP OF PORTRAITS


With the reader’s permission I beg, at this point of my narrative, to
indulge in one or two extrinsic observations.

In the preceding pages I have described my Pilgrim’s Progress from the
Slough of Despond, commonly known as Section Sanitaire Vingt-et-Un
(then located at Germaine) through the mysteries of Noyon, Gré and
Paris to the Porte de Triage de La Ferté Macé, Orne. With the end of my
first day as a certified inhabitant of the latter institution a
definite progression is brought to a close. Beginning with my second
day at La Ferté a new period opens. This period extends to the moment
of my departure and includes the discovery of The Delectable Mountains,
two of which—The Wanderer and I shall not say the other—have already
been sighted. It is like a vast grey box in which are laid
helter-skelter a great many toys, each of which is itself completely
significant apart from the always unchanging temporal dimension which
merely contains it along with the rest. I make this point clear for the
benefit of any of my readers who have not had the distinguished
privilege of being in jail. To those who have been in jail my meaning
is at once apparent; particularly if they have had the highly
enlightening experience of being in jail with a perfectly indefinite
sentence. How, in such a case, could events occur and be remembered
otherwise than as individualities distinct from Time Itself? Or, since
one day and the next are the same to such a prisoner, where does Time
come in at all? Obviously, once the prisoner is habituated to his
environment, once he accepts the fact that speculation as to when he
will regain his liberty cannot possibly shorten the hours of his
incarceration and may very well drive him into a state of unhappiness
(not to say morbidity), events can no longer succeed each other:
whatever happens, while it may happen in connection with some other
perfectly distinct happenings, does not happen in a scale of temporal
priorities—each happening is self-sufficient, irrespective of minutes,
months and the other treasures of freedom.

It is for this reason that I do not purpose to inflict upon the reader
a diary of my alternative aliveness and non-existence at La Ferté—not
because such a diary would unutterably bore him, but because the diary
or time method is a technique which cannot possibly do justice to
timelessness. I shall (on the contrary) lift from their grey box at
random certain (to me) more or less astonishing toys; which may or may
not please the reader, but whose colours and shapes and textures are a
part of that actual Present—without future and past—whereof they alone
are cognizant who—so to speak—have submitted to an amputation of the
world.

I have already stated that La Ferté was a Porte de Triage—that is to
say, a place where suspects of all varieties were herded by _le
gouvernement français_ preparatory to their being judged as to their
guilt by a Commission. If the Commission found that they were wicked
persons or dangerous persons, or undesirable persons, or puzzling
persons, or persons in some way insusceptible of analysis, they were
sent from La Ferté to a “regular” prison, called Précigne, in the
province of Sarthe. About Précigne the most awful rumors were spread.
It was whispered that it had a huge moat about it, with an infinity of
barbed wire fences thirty-feet high, and lights trained on the walls
all night to discourage the escape of prisoners. Once in Précigne you
were “in” for good and all, _pour la durée de la guerre_, which _durée_
was a subject of occasional and dismal speculation—occasional for
reasons, as I have mentioned, of mental health; dismal for unreasons of
diet, privation, filth, and other trifles. La Ferté was, then, a
stepping stone either to freedom or to Précigne. But the excellent and
inimitable and altogether benignant French Government was not satisfied
with its own generosity in presenting one merely with Précigne—beyond
that lurked a _cauchemar_ called by the singularly poetic name: Isle de
Groix. A man who went to Isle de Groix was done.

As the Surveillant said to us all, leaning out of a littlish window,
and to me personally upon occasion—

“You are not prisoners. Oh, no. No indeed, I should say not. Prisoners
are not treated like this. You are lucky.”

I had _de la chance_ all right, but that was something which the
_pauvre_ M. Surveillant wot altogether not of. As for my
fellow-prisoners, I am sorry to say that he was—it seems to my humble
personality—quite wrong. For who was eligible to La Ferté? Anyone whom
the police could find in the lovely country of France (a) who was not
guilty of treason (b) who could not prove that he was not guilty of
treason. By treason I refer to any little annoying habits of
independent thought or action which _en temps de guerre_ are put in a
hole and covered over, with the somewhat naïve idea that from their
cadavers violets will grow, whereof the perfume will delight all good
men and true and make such worthy citizens forget their sorrows. Fort
Leavenworth, for instance, emanates even now a perfume which is utterly
delightful to certain Americans. Just how many La Fertés France boasted
(and for all I know may still boast) God Himself knows. At least, in
that Republic, amnesty has been proclaimed, or so I hear.—But to return
to the Surveillants remark.

_J’avais de la chance._ Because I am by profession a painter and a
writer. Whereas my very good friends, all of them deeply suspicious
characters, most of them traitors, without exception lucky to have the
use of their cervical vertebrae, etc., etc., could (with a few
exceptions) write not a word and read not a word; neither could they
_faire la photographie_ as Monsieur Auguste chucklingly called it (at
which I blushed with pleasure): worst of all, the majority of these
dark criminals who had been caught in nefarious plots against the
honour of France were totally unable to speak French. Curious thing.
Often I pondered the unutterable and inextinguishable wisdom of the
police, who—undeterred by facts which would have deceived less astute
intelligences into thinking that these men were either too stupid or
too simple to be connoisseurs of the art of betrayal—swooped upon their
helpless prey with that indescribable courage which is the prerogative
of policemen the world over, and bundled it into the La Fertés of that
mighty nation upon some, at least, of whose public buildings it seems
to me that I remember reading:

Liberté.

Egalité.

Fraternité.

And I wondered that France should have a use for Monsieur Auguste, who
had been arrested (because he was a Russian) when his fellow munition
workers struck and whose wife wanted him in Paris because she was
hungry and because their child was getting to look queer and white.
Monsieur Auguste, that desperate ruffian exactly five feet tall
who—when he could not keep from crying (one must think about one’s wife
or even one’s child once or twice, I merely presume, if one loves
them—“_et ma femme est très gen-tille, elle est fran-çaise et très
belle, très, très belle, vraiment; elle n’est pas comme moi, un pet-it
homme laid, ma femme est grande et belle, elle sait bien lire et
é-crire, vraiment; et notre fils … vous dev-ez voir notre pet-it
fils…._”)—used to start up and cry out, taking B. by one arm and me by
the other,

“_Allons, mes amis! Chan-tons ‘Quackquackquack_.’”

Whereupon we would join in the following song, which Monsieur Auguste
had taught us with great care, and whose renditions gave him
unspeakable delight:

  “_ Un canard, déployant ses ailes
                             (Quackquackquack)
  Il disait à sa canarde fidèle
                             (Quackquackquack)
  Il disait (Quackquackquack)
  Il faisait (Quackquackquack)
       Quand_” (spelling mine)
  “_finirons nos desseins,
                          Quack.
                             Quack.
                                Quack.
                                  Qua-
                                     ck._”


I suppose I will always puzzle over the ecstasies of That Wonderful
Duck. And how Monsieur Auguste, the merest gnome of a man, would bend
backwards in absolute laughter at this song’s spirited conclusion upon
a note so low as to wither us all.

Then, too, the Schoolmaster.

A little fragile old man. His trousers were terrifically too big for
him. When he walked (in an insecure and frightened way) his trousers
did the most preposterous wrinkles. If he leaned against a tree in the
_cour_, with a very old and also fragile pipe in his pocket—the stem
(which looked enormous in contrast to the owner) protruding
therefrom—his three-sizes too big collar would leap out so as to make
his wizened neck appear no thicker than the white necktie which flowed
upon his two-sizes too big shirt. He always wore a coat which reached
below his knees, which coat, with which knees, perhaps someone had once
given him. It had huge shoulders which sprouted, like wings, on either
side of his elbows when he sat in The Enormous Room quietly writing at
a tiny three-legged table, a very big pen walking away with his weak
bony hand. His too big cap had a little button on top which looked like
the head of a nail; and suggested that this old doll had once lost its
poor grey head and had been repaired by means of tacking its head upon
its neck, where it should be and properly belonged. Of what hideous
crime was this being suspected? By some mistake he had three
moustaches, two of them being eyebrows. He used to teach school in
Alsace-Lorraine, and his sister is there. In speaking to you his kind
face is peacefully reduced to triangles. And his tie buttons on every
morning with a Bang! And off he goes; led about by his celluloid
collar, gently worried about himself, delicately worried about the
world. At eating time he looks sidelong as he stuffs soup into stiff
lips. There are two holes where cheeks might have been. Lessons hide in
his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of eyes. Did he, by any chance,
tell the children that there are such monstrous things as peace and
good will … a corrupter of youth, no doubt … he is altogether incapable
of anger, wholly timid and tintinnabulous. And he had always wanted so
much to know—if there were wild horses in America?

Yes, probably the Schoolmaster was a notorious seditionist. The
all-wise French Government has its ways, which like the ways of God are
wonderful.

I had almost forgot The Bear—number two, not to be confused with the
seeker of cigarette-ends. A big, shaggy person, a farmer, talked about
“_mon petit jardin_,” an anarchist, wrote practically all the time (to
the gentle annoyance of The Schoolmaster) at the queer-legged table;
wrote letters (which he read aloud with evident satisfaction to
himself) addressing “my _confrères_,” stimulating them to even greater
efforts, telling them that the time was ripe, that the world consisted
of brothers, etc. I liked The Bear. He had a sincerity which, if
somewhat startlin

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