In taking over the place the officers of the American Red Cross were not blind to the fact that they were getting nothing more than a great, rambling, two-story stable and its yards, which were just as they had been left when a thousand horses had been led forth from their stalls. The place was a fearful litter of confusion, while crowded together at one end of the courtyard were the old _fiacres_--ancient, weather-beaten, decrepit, abandoned. They made a pathetic picture. Rumor told the neighborhood, and told it quickly, that the _Croix Rouge Américaine_--as the French know our organization over there--had taken over the old stables and were to use them for warehousing purposes, but rumor was not smart enough to tell how the trick was to be done. It did not know; the Red Cross workers did. They had found after making a careful inventory of the place, that they had on their hands about 8,000 square yards of ground, covered for the greater part with more or less dilapidated buildings a hundred years old or even older. More than that, there were five hundred tons of manure in the structures which must be completely removed and the premises thoroughly disinfected before there could be even a thought of using them for goods storage. Cleaning the Augean stables was something of the same sort of a job. Various Parisian contractors who specialize in that sort of work were asked what they would charge for the task of getting the big stables clean once again. One said seven thousand francs. Another allowed that it would cost five thousand. He was the lowest bidder. The Red Cross turned from all of them and went to the market gardeners of the great central Halles. Would they help? Of course they would--the name of the _Croix Rouge Américaine_ has some real potency in France. In four days the stables were cleaned--perfectly and at an entire cost of less than two hundred francs! Then, with the aid of a hundred workmen, the work of rehabilitating them was begun. At that time in Paris carpenters were not to be had for love or for money, so every available Red Cross man who knew how to saw a piece of wood or who could drive a nail without hitting his thumb--and at that, there were many thumbs jammed before the job was entirely done--was pressed into service. From the famous Latin Quarter of Paris came many volunteers, some of them American painters and sculptors more familiar with working tools of other sorts, but all fired with a zeal and a determination to help. Such a prodigious din of work the neighborhood could not easily remember!