It is already crowded, and it screams.

It stops, and turns the platform into a street.

We climb up and put ourselves away--not without glimpses, by the light of lanterns moving here and there, of some chalk sketches on the carriages--heads of pigs in spiked helmets, and the inscription, "To Berlin!"-- the only things which slightly indicate where we are going.
The train sets off.

We who have just got in crowd to the windows and try to look outside, towards the level crossing where, perhaps, the people in whom we live are still watching for us; but the eye can no longer pick up anything but a vague stirring, shaded with crayon and jumbled with nature.

We are blind and we fall back each to his place.
When we are enveloped in the iron-hammered rumble of advance, we fix up our luggage, arrange ourselves for the night, smoke, drink and talk.
Badly lighted and opaque with fumes, the compartment might be a corner of a tavern that has been caught up and swept away into the unknown.
Some conversation mixes its rumble with that of the train.