"_N'importe_, we are _camarades_."

A stream of puzzled uh-ahs followed this reply. The fencer, or rooster or
whatever he might be, finally, picking up the lamp and the lock, said:
"_Alors, viens avec moi, KEW-MANGZ._" I started to pick up the _sac_, but
he told me it would be kept in the office (we being in the office). I
said I had checked a large _sac_ and my fur overcoat at Briouse, and he
assured me they would be sent on by train. He now dismissed the
_gendarmes_, who had been listening curiously to the examination. As I
was conducted from the bureau I asked him point-blank: "How long am I to
stay here?"--to which he answered "_Oh, peutetre un jour, deux jours, je
ne sais pas._"

Two days in a _gendarmerie_ would be enough, I thought. We marched out.

Behind me the bedslippered rooster uhahingly shuffled. In front of me
clumsily gamboled the huge imitation of myself. It descended the terribly
worn stairs. It turned to the right and disappeared....

We were standing in a chapel.

The shrinking light which my guide held had become suddenly minute; it
was beating, senseless and futile, with shrill fists upon a thick
enormous moisture of gloom. To the left and right through lean oblongs of
stained glass burst dirty burglars of moonlight. The clammy stupid
distance uttered dimly an uncanny conflict--the mutterless tumbling of
brutish shadows. A crowding ooze battled with my lungs. My nostrils
fought against the monstrous atmospheric slime which hugged a sweet
unpleasant odour. Staring ahead, I gradually disinterred the pale carrion
of the darkness--an altar, guarded with the ugliness of unlit candles, on