“American, eh?” he mused, when his dream had ended; “Sailor? Hum! Well, go sit out in the hall until I am relieved and I’ll take you to the Asile.”
I sat down against the wall on the flagstone of the entry and fell into a doze from which I was awakened by the entrance of another gendarme, in full armament like his colleague. The latter stepped out a moment later, growled a “viens,” and hurried off through the deserted streets, his sword rattling noisily on the pavement in the silence of the night. I marched close at his heels, wondering what was in store for me; for, though I had often heard roadsters mention the vagabond quarters which every city of France maintains, I knew nothing of the institutions at first hand.
Five minutes’ walk brought us to a small brick building, at the door of which the gendarme drew out a bunch of gigantic keys and entered. The first door led into a hallway along which the officer walked some ten feet and, with more rattling of keys, opened a second that led into nothing, so far as I could see, but Stygian darkness.
“Voilà!” he shouted, pushing me past him through the door; “Te voilà à l’Asile de Nuit.”
“But where do I sleep?” I demanded. The darkness was absolute and, at my first step inside the door, I bumped against what appeared to be the edge of a heavy table.
“Hein! Diable! Sleep on the shelf,” snapped the gendarme; then, comprehending that I was unfamiliar with the architectural arrangements of an Asile de Nuit, he struck a match and by its brief flicker I caught a glimpse of the night asylum of Cannes.
It was a room about twenty feet long and seven wide, with a single, strong-barred window at the end facing the street. The entire length of the room ran a sloping wooden shelf, six feet wide and some four feet above the floor at the highest edge, with an alleyway a foot wide between it and the wall behind me. The ledge was occupied by about fifteen as sorry specimens of humanity as it had as yet been my lot to see in one collection. They were packed like spoons, with nothing between their bodies and the twenty-foot bed but their own rags; and each of the fifteen braced his feet against a board projecting some four inches above the lower end of the shelf as if his life depended on keeping in that position.
As the wavering light of the match fell on their faces, a chorus of surly growls burst from the lips of the speakers, and increased to shouts and curses when the gendarme crowded a knee between two of the prostrate forms and exerted his strength to push more closely together the two divisions of the company thus formed.
“Sacré bleu, vous!” he bellowed. “Bougez vous, donc! Here ’s a comrade. Do you want all the Asile to yourselves, non de Dieu!” “Crowd in there,” he commanded, pushing me towards the six-inch space which he had opened between two of the sleepers. I crowded in, as per order, but did not succeed in widening the space to any appreciable extent. The gendarme went out, slammed and locked both doors, and left me to listen to the growls and oaths that by no means decreased at his exit. The planks, for all I know, may have been soft enough; with all my struggling I could not force the slumberers far enough apart to reach the shelf; and I spent the night lying with one shoulder and one hip on each of my nearest companions, who alternated in turning over and pushing me back and forth between them like a piece of storm-tossed wreckage on the open sea.
The king of theatrical costumers, striving to dress unconventionally the beggar chorus of a comic opera, could have created nothing to equal the garments of the gathering of tramps from the four corners of Europe that slid off the shelf with the advent of daylight, and fell to brushing and rearranging their rags as if some improvement in appearance could result from such industry. Instinct is so strong in man that, were his only covering a fig-leaf, he would doubtless give it a shake and a pull upon arising, if only in memory of days when his attire was less abbreviated. I rubbed my eyes and waited for some of my companions to make the first move towards the door. But their toilet finished, they sat down one by one on the edge of the shelf as if the desire to get outside the building was the furthest from their thoughts, and fell to exchanging their troubles in at least four languages.