we turned. All too soon I made out its entirely dismal exterior. Grey
long stone walls, surrounded on the street side by a fence of ample
proportions and uniformly dull colour. Now I perceived that we made
toward a gate, singularly narrow and forbidding, in the grey long wall.
No living soul appeared to inhabit this desolation.

The older rang at the gate. A _gendarme_ with a revolver answered his
ring; and presently he was admitted, leaving the younger and myself to
wait. And now I began to realize that this was the _gendarmerie_ of the
town, into which for safe-keeping I was presently to be inducted for the
night. My heart sank, I confess, at the thought of sleeping in the
company of that species of humanity which I had come to detest beyond
anything in hell or on earth. Meanwhile the doorman had returned with the
older, and I was bidden roughly enough to pick up my baggage and march. I
followed my guides down a corridor, up a staircase, and into a dark,
small room where a candle was burning. Dazzled by the light and dizzied
by the fatigue of my ten or twelve mile stroll, I let my baggage go; and
leaned against a convenient wall, trying to determine who was now my
tormentor.

Facing me at a table stood a man of about my own height, and, as I should
judge, about forty years old. His face was seedy sallow and long. He had
bushy semi-circular eyebrows which drooped so much as to reduce his eyes
to mere blinking slits. His cheeks were so furrowed that they leaned
inward. He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large beak of
preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the expression of
falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the unimportant chin.
His mouth was made of two long uncertain lips which twitched nervously.
His cropped black hair was rumpled; his blouse, from which hung a croix
de guerre, unbuttoned; and his unputteed shanks culminated in