on to a great street which led into the "outer" boulevard of De
Batignolles and Clichy. To that darkness with which the city, in fear of
raiding aircraft, has hidden itself, was added the continuous, pouring
rain. In the light of our lamps, the wet, golden trees of the black,
silent boulevards shone strangely, and the illuminated advertising
kiosks which we passed, one after the other at the corners of great
streets, stood lonely and drenched, in the swift, white touch of our
radiance. Black and shiny, the asphalt roadway appeared to go on in a
straight line forever and forever.

Neither in residential, suburban Neuilly nor in deserted Montmartre was
there a light to be seen, but when we drew into the working quarter of
La Chapelle, lights appeared in the windows, as if some toiler of the
night was expected home or starting for his labor, and vague forms,
battling with the rain or in refuge under the awning of a café, were now
and then visible. From the end of the great, mean rue de La Chapelle the
sounds of the unrest of the railroad yards began to be heard, for this
street leads to the freight-houses near the fortifications. Our
objective was a great freight station which the Government, some months
before, had turned into a receiving-post for the wounded; it lay on the
edge of the yard, some distance in from the street, behind a huddle of
smaller sheds and outbuildings. To our surprise the rue de La Chapelle
was strewn with ambulances rushing from the station, and along two sides
of the great yard, where the merchandise trucks had formerly turned in,
six or seven hundred more ambulances were waiting. We turned out of the
dark, rain-swept city into this hurly-burly of shouts, snorting of
engines, clashing of gears, and whining of brakes, illuminated with a
thousand intermeshing beams of headlights across whose brilliance the
rain fell in sloping, liquid rods. "Quick, a small car this way!" cried
some one in an authoritative tone, and number fifty-three ran up an