The airstrips, being far from the city, remained untouched, and the pilots had their orders, and followed them to the letter. Police and military observers in their hermetic bunkers, seeing what was going on, finally resorted to the extreme measures that plunged all Nounas into the chaos of total emotional derangement. Of course we had no inkling of any of this at the Hilton. It was eleven o'clock at night when the first armored divisions of the army appeared on the scene, rolling into the square surrounded by parks and palms; they had come to stifle the brotherly love rampant among the police. This they did, with considerable bloodshed. Poor Mauvin was standing a foot away from the place where a pacification grenade exploded; the force of the blast tore the fingers off his left hand as well as his left ear, but he assured me that he had never really cared for that hand in the first place and the ear wasn't worth mentioning, in fact if I liked I could have the other, and he pulled a penknife from his pocket to make good the offer; but I took the penknife gently from his hand and led him to an improvised first-aid station. There he was tended by the secretaries of the liberated publishers; now chemically converted, they were all bawling like babies. They had put on modest clothing and even wore veils, so as not to tempt anyone to sin; a few of these pitiful creatures, more strongly affected, had actually shaven their heads. On the way back from the first-aid area I had the miserable luck to run into a group of publishers. Though I didn't recognize them at first: they were dressed in old burlap bags tied around with rope (which they also used to flog themselves); crying for mercy, clamoring, they threw themselves at my feet and beseeched me to whip them properly, for they had depraved society. Imagine my surprise when, looking at these flagellants more closely, I saw that they were all from the staff of Playboy, including the editor in chief! That gentleman wouldn't let me go, so bitterly did his conscience torment him.