She would
stand behind a door for minutes shaking so that you could hear her
knuckles knocking against the wall. She seemed particularly to dread
the sight of the German privates who came and went; and they, seeing
this, were kind to her in a clumsy, awkward way. Hourly, like a ghost
she drifted in and out.
For a while it looked as though we should spend the night sitting up in
chairs; but about ten o'clock three soldiers, led by Rosenthal and
accompanied by the landlady, went out; and when they came back they
brought some thick feather mattresses which had been commandeered from
neighboring houses, we judged. Also, through the goodness of his heart,
Mittendorfer, who impressed us more and more as a strange compound of
severity and softness, took pity on Gerbeaux and Stevens, and bringing
them forth from that pestilential hole next door, he convoyed them in to
stay overnight with us. They told us that by now the air in the
improvised prison was absolutely suffocating, what with the closeness,
the fouled straw, the stale food and the proximity of so many dirty
human bodies all packed into the kennel together.
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