the little Belgian feller was just here, he's a great one for the girls.
He and Harree. Always getting _cabinot_. I got it twice myself since I
been here."

All this time the enormous room was filling gradually with dirty light.
In the further end six figures were brooming furiously, yelling to each
other in the dust like demons. A seventh, Harree, was loping to and fro
splashing water from a pail and enveloping everything and everybody in a
ponderous and blasphemous fog of _Gott-ver-dummers_. Along three sides
(with the exception, that is, of the nearer end, which boasted the sole
door) were laid, with their lengths at right angles to the wall, at
intervals of three or four feet, something like forty _paillasses_. On
each, with half a dozen exceptions (where the occupants had not yet
finished their coffee or were on duty for the _corvee_) lay the headless
body of a man smothered in its blanket, only the boots showing.

The demons were working towards our end of the room. Harree had got his
broom and was assisting. Nearer and nearer they came; converging, they
united their separate heaps of filth in a loudly stinking single mound at
the door. Brooms were stacked against the wall in the corner. The men
strolled back to their mattresses.

Monsieur Auguste, whose French had not been able to keep pace with
Fritz's English, saw his chance, and proposed "now that the Room is all
clean, let us go take a little walk, the three of us." Fritz understood
perfectly, and rose, remarking as he fingered his immaculate chin "Well,
I guess I'll take a shave before the bloody _planton_ comes"--and
Monsieur Auguste, B., and I started down the room.

It was in shape oblong, about 80 feet by 40, unmistakably ecclesiastical