"Where are we?" asked some one.
"Don't you know?" the ex-militia man snarled. "They've landed us at Saint Lazare!"
"Saint Lazare!" cried several in unison.
One of my friends snorted. "Don't be silly. St. Lazare is the prison for women, not war correspondents."
I roused from my gloomy meditations to break into the conversation.
"I'll tell you where we are if you really care to know," I said. "We're in the Cherche Midi—the foremost military prison of France. This is the place where Dreyfus awaited his trial. This is the place of the historic rats, etc."
I ceased abruptly. Here I was, a bare ten minutes' walk from my home—and I might as well have been a thousand miles. The clang of those doors had shut off all the world. How long did they expect to keep us there? A night? A week? A month? Perhaps until the war was over? What could we do about it? Nothing. Those doors shut off all hope. We could get no word to any one if our captors did not desire it. We would remain there exactly as long as they wished. No matter what we thought about it—no matter how innocent we were of military misdemeanor. We were prisoners of war in the Cherche Midi—and I understood the Dreyfus case better.
Just before we filed into the examination room whence came the shaft of light, the sage of our party, who had suggested back in the courtyard that we be good prisoners until the right moment arrived, tapped me on the shoulder and spoke in my ear:
"Now's the time," he said. "We must kick now or never. I will begin the rumpus and you follow—and kick hard."
They lined us up in the tiny office where a lieutenant duly inscribed our names and nefarious profession in the great register. He slammed the book shut, and began directions to an orderly about conducting us to our cells—when the sage spoke.