between ten thirty and the completion of the evening meal (otherwise the
four o'clock soup) I am quite at a loss to say. Whether it was that glass
of _pinard_ (plus, or rather times, the astonishing exhaustion bequeathed
me by my journey of the day before) which caused me to enter temporarily
the gates of forgetfulness, or whether the sheer excitement attendant
upon my ultra-novel surroundings proved too much for an indispensable
part of my so-called mind--I do not in the least know. I am fairly
certain that I went on afternoon promenade. After which I must surely
have mounted to await my supper in The Enormous Room. Whence (after the
due and proper interval) I doubtless descended to the clutches of _La
Soupe Extraordinaire_ ... yes, for I perfectly recall the cry which made
me suddenly to re-enter the dimension of distinctness ... and by Jove I
had just finished a glass of _pinard_ ... somebody must have treated me
... we were standing together, spoon in hand ... when we heard--

"_A la promenade_," ... we issued _en queue_, firmly grasping our spoons
and bread, through the dining-room door. Turning right we were emitted,
by the door opposite the kitchen, from the building itself into the open
air. A few steps and we passed through the little gate in the barbed wire
fence of the _cour_.

Greatly refreshed by my second introduction to the canteen, and with the
digestion of the somewhat extraordinary evening meal apparently assured,
I gazed almost intelligently around me. Count Bragard had declined the
evening promenade in favour of The Enormous Room, but I perceived in the
crowd the now familiar faces of the three Hollanders--John, Harree and
Pompom--likewise of The Bear, Monsieur Auguste, and Fritz. In the course
of the next hour I had become, if not personally, at least optically
acquainted with nearly a dozen others.