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Leaves from a Field Note-Book by John Hartman Morgan
page 60 of 229 (26%)

The President of the Court and the Judge-Advocate stood in private
colloquy in one of the deep traverse-like windows of the Hôtel de Ville
over-looking the Place. A heavy rain was falling from a sullen sky, and
the deserted square was a dancing sea of agitation as the raindrops
smote the little pools between the cobbles and ricochetted with a
multitudinous hiss. Now and again a gust of wind swept across, and the
rain rattled against the windows. On the opposite side of the square one
of the houses gaped curiously, with bedroom and parlour exposed to view,
as though some one had snatched away the walls and laid the scene for
one of those Palais Royal farces in which the characters pursue a
complicated domestic intrigue on two floors at once. That house, with
its bed exposed to the rain dripping from the open rafters, was indeed
both farcical and indecent; it stood among its unscathed neighbours like
a pariah. The rain was loud and insistent, but not so loud as to dull
the distant thunder of the guns. The intermittent gusts of wind now and
again interrupted its monotonous theme, but the intervals were as brief
as they were violent, and in this polyphonic composition of rain, wind,
and guns, the hissing of the raindrops came and went as in a fugue and
with an inexpressible mournfulness.

Inside the room was a table covered with green baize, on which were
methodically arranged in extended order a Bible, an inkstand, a sheaf of
paper, and a copy of the _Manual of Military Law_. Behind the table were
seven chairs, and to the right and left of them stood two others. The
seven chairs were for the members of the court; the chair on the extreme
right was for the "prisoner's friend," that on the left awaited the
Judge-Advocate. About five yards in front of the table, in the centre of
an empty space, stood two more chairs turned towards it. Otherwise the
room was as bare as a guard-room. And this austere meagreness gave it a
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