floor I pondered, having nothing to do and being unable to move, upon the subject of my
physical endurance—wondering just how the men about me, many of them
beyond middle age, some extremely delicate, in all not more than five or
six as rugged constitutionally as myself, lived through the nights in The
Enormous Room. Also I recollected glancing through an open door into the
women's quarters, at the risk of being noticed by the planton in whose
charge I was at the time (who, fortunately, was stupid even for a
planton, else I should have been well punished for my curiosity) and
beholding paillasses identical in all respects with ours reposing on
the floor; and I thought, if it is marvellous that old men and sick men
can stand this and not die, it is certainly miraculous that girls of
eleven and fifteen, and the baby which I saw once being caressed out in
the women's cour with unspeakable gentleness by a little putain whose
name I do not know, and the dozen or so oldish females whom I have often
seen on promenade—can stand this and not die. These things I mention not
to excite the reader's pity nor yet his indignation; I mention them
because I do not know of any other way to indicate—it is no more than
indicating—the significance of the torture perpetrated under the
Directeur's direction in the case of the girl Lena. If incidentally it
throws light on the personality of the torturer I shall be gratified.
Lena's confinement in the cabinot—which dungeon I have already attempted to describe but to whose filth and slime no words can begin to do justice—was in this case solitary. Once a day, of an afternoon and always at the time when all the men were upstairs after the second promenade (which gave the writer of this history an exquisite chance to see an atrocity at first-hand), Lena was taken out of the cabinot by three plantons and permitted a half-hour promenade just outside the door of the building, or in the same locality—delimited by barbed wire on one side and the washing-shed on another—made famous by the scene of inebriety above described. Punctually at the expiration of thirty minutes she was shoved back into the cabinot by the plantons. Every day for sixteen days I
