They no longer see the February sky; no longer do they breathe the cold odorous wind: they are pushed one against the other into a filthy corridor, from the walls of which—painted Heaven knows how!—oozes a thick, slimy sweat.
They remain there herded for some time, until another door opens. A gendarme counts them off by the dozen, like fruit or cattle, and hustles them into a large hall where the Thing is to take place....
At once a sickening smell of man makes them gasp. They cannot at first see very clearly what all the movement going on there is about. But they are left no time to think.
What indeed is the good of thinking at a time when an immense lamenting cry escapes from the entire stricken nation—a desperate call, the death-rattle of a drowning people?
Why think? Does that frenzied, roaring whirlwind which lays waste the old continent, does that think? No, it is not indeed the time for thought.
The men have to undress quickly and fall in—in rows.
The hall is huge and forbidding. Its walls are decorated with texts, and there are busts of unknown men; in the centre a table, as at a tribunal.
Some big-wig, white-haired and rather arrogant, is enthroned there; he seems exhausted, but pertinacious. He is assisted by some obscure supernumeraries.
In front of the table, two doctors in white overalls—one old and wizened, the other still young, with a preoccupied, listless look.
The men advance in single files towards each of the doctors in white: they march one behind the other like suppliants proceeding to the altar of an angered God. They do not know what to do with their arms.