ond the woods a rocket rises and bursts against the
sky, brilliant as a meteor. It means something most certainly, and
it warns some one; but its coarse ingenuity does not deceive me. No
barbarous signal such as this could give me back confidence in my soul
to-night.

II

The little room adjoining the closet where I sleep has been set apart
for those whose cries or effluvia make them intolerable to the rest. As
it is small and encumbered, it will only admit a single stretcher, and
men are brought in there to die in turn.

But lately, when the Chateau was reigning gracefully in the midst of
verdure, the centre of the great star of alleys piercing its groves
of limes and beeches, its owners occasionally entertained a brilliant
society; and if they had under their roof some gay and lovely milk-white
maiden, they gave her this little room at the summit of the right wing,
whence the sun may be seen rising above the forests, to dream, and
sleep, and adorn herself in.

To-day, the facade of the Chateau seems to be listening, strained
and anxious, to the cannonade; and the little room has become a
death-chamber.

Madelan was the first we put there. He was raving in such a brutal and
disturbing manner, in spite of the immobility of his long, paralysed
limbs, that his companions implored us to remove him. I think Madelan
neither understood nor noticed this isolation, for he was already given
over to a deeper solitude; but his incessant vociferation, after he was
deprived of listeners, took on a strange and terrible character.

For four days and four nights, he never ceased talking vehemently; and
listening to him, one began to think that all the life of the big body
that was already dead, had fled in frenzy to his throat. For four nights
I heard him shouting incoherent, elusive things, which seemed to be
replies to some mysterious interlocutor.

At dawn, and from hour to hour throughout the day, I went to see him
where he sprawled on a paillasse on the floor, like some red-haired
stricken beast, with out-stretched limbs, convulsed by spasms which
displaced the dirty blanket that covered him.

He lost flesh with such incredible rapidity that he seemed to be
evaporating through the gaping wound in the nape of his neck.

Then I would speak to him, saying things that were kindly meant but
futile, because conversation is impossible between a man who is being
whirled along by the waters of a torrent, and one who is seate