The men in overalls continue to move about among these human bodies. They do not stop feeling, manipulating, judging. They sink the ends of their fingers into the flesh of the shoulders and sides; they press the biceps with their thumb and middle finger, move joints, examine teeth and the inside of eyelids, pull hair, and tap chests as customs officers do casks. Then they make the men walk from left to right, and right to left. They make them bend, straighten themselves, kneel down, or expose the most secret parts of their person. Sometimes a breath of fresh air seems to come into the room: two well-built young men are asking to be enlisted. One hardly understands why they are there.... The whole tribunal looks at them with astonishment, as at pieces of golden ore in a handful of mud. They pass with a proud, rather forced smile. Again the procession begins of pathetic ugliness, terrors, despairs, incurable and ravaged fears. The tribunal made one think of a jagged cliff against which persons are dashed like sea-birds blown by a storm. The doctors show signs of exhaustion. The oldest, who is rather deaf, throws himself doggedly into his work, like a boar into the thicket. The young doctor is obviously suffering and irritated. He has the shrinking and uneasy look of some one engaged in an odious task and who finds no relief. And always human flesh abounds; always from the same corner of the room comes the long row of wan bodies, who walk gingerly on the floor. Sacred human flesh, sacred substance which serves thought, art, love, everything great in life--it is now nothing but a vile, evil-smelling lump of suet which one handles with disgust to find whether it is yet ready for the slaughter. Everybody begins to suffer from an insistent headache. The work goes on as in a dream, with the silences, the dragging movements, and the dark gaps of bad dreams. Two hours more pass in this way. Then suddenly some one says: “Here are the last ten.” They come in and undress one after the other. They have waited so long they seem exhausted, emptied, crushed. They accept the verdict listlessly and mechanically, as if felled by a blow; they go away in haste, without speaking, without looking round. The doctors wash their hands, as once did Pontius Pilate; they sign some papers ceremoniously and disappear. Night has come. The wind has fallen. A fog that absorbs the factory smoke still hangs over the town. Leaning against a lamp-post one of the last men examined vomits, after excruciating efforts, the wine he drank in the afternoon. The road is dark and deserted. The whole place reeks with the stench of the vomiting and the fog. A BURIAL As we seated ourselves at the table M. Gilbert asked: “What time is Lieutenant Limberg’s funeral?”