At midday other automobiles began to arrive, attracted by the enormous white flag with the red cross, which was now waving from the castle tower.  They came from the division battling beyond the Marne.  Their metal fittings were dented by projectiles, their wind-shields broken by star-shaped holes.  From their interiors appeared men and more men; some on foot, others on canvas stretchers—­faces pale and rubicund, profiles aquiline and snubby, red heads and skulls wrapped in white turbans stiff with blood; mouths that laughed with bravado and mouths that groaned with bluish lips; jaws supported with mummy-like bandages; giants in agony whose wounds were not apparent; shapeless forms ending in a head that talked and smoked; legs with hanging flesh that was dyeing the First Aid wrappings with their red moisture; arms that hung as inert as dead boughs; torn uniforms in which were conspicuous the tragic vacancies of absent members.

This avalanche of suffering was quickly distributed throughout the castle.  In a few hours it was so completely filled that there was not a vacant bed—­the last arrivals being laid in the shadow of the trees.  The telephones were ringing incessantly; the surgeons in coarse aprons were going from one side to the other, working rapidly; human life was submitted to savage proceedings with roughness and celerity.  Those who died under it simply left one more cot free for the others that kept on coming.  Desnoyers saw bloody baskets filled with shapeless masses of flesh, strips of skin, broken bones, entire limbs.  The orderlies were carrying these terrible remnants to the foot of the park in order to bury them in a little plot which had been Chichi’s favorite reading nook.

Pairs of soldiers were carrying out objects wrapped in sheets which the owner recognized as his.  These were the dead, and the park was soon converted into a cemetery.  No longer was the little retreat large enough to hold the corpses and the severed remains from the operations.  New grave trenches were being opened near by.  The Germans armed with shovels were pressing into service a dozen of the farmer-prisoners to aid in unloading the dead.  Now they were bringing them down by the cartload, dumping them in like the rubbish from some demolished building.  Don Marcelo felt an abnormal delight in contemplating this increasing number of vanquished enemies, yet he grieved at the same time that this precipitation of intruders should be deposited forever on his property.

At nightfall, overwhelmed by so many emotions, he again suffered the torments of hunger.  All day long he had eaten nothing but the crust of bread found in the kitchen by the Warden’s wife.  The rest he had left for her and her daughter.  A distress as harrowing to him as his hunger was the sight of poor Georgette’s shocked despondency.  She was always trying to escape from his presence in an agony of shame.

“Don’t let the Master see me!” she would cry, hiding her face.  Since his presence seemed to recall more vividly the memory of her assaults, Desnoyers tried, while in the lodge, to avoid going near her.