pékin! . . . Get out of this--go on--before I . . ."
"But, Sergeant," I murmured, "I have come to join . . ."
"You will interrupt me, will you?" he yelled. "That's settled it! Wait till you're in uniform--and I'll show you the inside of a little stone box I know of. That'll teach you to contradict Sergeants. . . . Get out of this, you insubordinate rascal--and take your feuille de route to the Paymaster's Office in the Rue des Enfants Abandonnés. . . . I'll deal with you when you come back. Name of an Anointed Poodle, I will! . . ."
In silence I turned about and went in search of the Rue des Enfants Abandonnés, and the Paymaster's Office, feeling that I was indeed going to begin at the bottom of a fairly steep ladder, and to receive some valuable discipline and training in self-control.
I believe that, for the fraction of a second, I was tempted to seek the train for Calais and England, instead of the Street of the Abandoned Children and the Office of the Paymaster. (Were they Children of Abandoned Character, or Children who had Been Abandoned by Others? Alas, I knew not; but feeling something of a poor Abandoned Child myself, I decided that it was the latter.)
Expecting otherwise, I found the non-commissioned officer who was the Paymaster's Clerk, a courteous person. He asked me which Squadron I would like to join, and I replied that I should like to join any Squadron to which the present Sergeant of the Guard did not belong.
"Who's he?" asked the clerk.
I described the Sergeant as a ruffianly brute with a bristly moustache, bristly eyebrows, bristly hair, and bristly manners. A bullying blackguard in fact.
"Any private to any Sergeant," smiled the clerk; "but it sounds like Blüm. Did he swear by the name of an Anointed Poodle, by any chance?"
"That's the man," said I.
"Third Squadron. I'll put you down for the Second. . . . Take this paper and ask for the Sergeant-Major of the Second Squadron. And don't forget that if you can stand well with the S.S.M. and the Adjudant of your Squadron, you'll be all right. . . ."
§ 4
On my return to the Barracks, I again encountered the engaging Sergeant Blüm at the Guard-Room by the gates.
"To what Squadron are you drafted?" he asked.
"To the Second, Sergeant," I replied innocently.
"And that's the worst news I have heard this year," was the reply. "I hoped you would be in the Third. I'd have had you put in my own peloton. I have a way with aristocrats and Volontaires, and macquereaux. . . ."
"I did my best, Sergeant," I replied truthfully.
"Tais donc ta sale gueule," he roared, and turning into the Guard-Room, bade a trooper do some scavenging work by removing me and taking me to the Office of the Sergeant-Major of the Second Squadron.
I followed the trooper, a tall fair Norman, across the great parade-ground, now alive with men in stable-kit, carrying brooms or buckets, wheeling barrows, leading horses, pumping water into great drinking-troughs, and generally fulfilling the law of their being, as cavalrymen.
"Come along, you gaping pig," said my guide, as I gazed around the pleasing purlieus of my new home.
I came along.
"Hurry yourself, or I'll chuck you into the manure-heap, after the S.S.M. has seen you," added my conducting Virgil.
"Friend and brother-in-arms," said I, "let us go to the manure-heap at once, and we'll see who goes on it. . . . I don't know why you ever left it. . . ."
"Oh--you're one of those beastly bullies, are you?" replied the trooper, and knocked at the door of a small bare room which contained four beds, some military accoutrements, a table, a chair, and the Squadron Sergeant-Major, a small grey-haired man with an ascetic lean face, and moustache of grey wire, neatly clipped.
This was a person of a type different altogether from Sergeant Blüm's. A dog that never barked, but bit hard, Sergeant-Major Martin was a cold stern man, forceful and fierce, but in manner quiet, distant, and almost polite.
"A Volontaire!" he said. "A pity. One does not like them, but such things must be. . . ."
He took my papers, asked me questions, and recorded the answers in the livret or regimental-book, which every French soldier must cherish. He then bade the trooper conduct me to Sergeant de Poncey with the bad news that I was to be in his peloton.
"Follow me, bully," said the trooper after he had saluted the Sergeant-Major and wheeled from the room. . . .
Sergeant de Poncey was discovered in the exercise of his duty, giving painful sword-drill to a punishment-squad, outside the Riding School. He was a handsome man who looked as though life held nothing for him but pain. His voice was that of an educated man.
The troopers, clad in canvas uniform and clogs, looked desperately miserable.
They had cause, since they had spent the night in prison, had had no breakfast, and were undergoing a kind of torture. The Sergeant would give an order, the squad would obey it, and there the matter would rest--until some poor devil, sick and half-starved, would be unable to keep his arm, and heavy sword, extended any longer. At the first quiver and sinking down of the blade, the monotonous voice would announce:
"Trooper Ponthieu, two more days salle de police, for not keeping still," and a new order would be given for a fresh form of grief, and another punishment to the weakest.
Well--they were there for punishment, and they were certainly getting it.
When the squad had been marched back to prison, Sergeant de Poncey attended to me. He looked me over from head to foot.
"A gentleman," said he. "Good! I was one myself, once. Come with me," and he led the way to the quartiers of the Second Squadron, and the part of the room in which his peloton slept.
Two partitions, some eight feet in height, divided the room into three, and along partitions and walls were rows of beds. Each bed was so narrow that there was no discomfort in eating one's meals as one sat astride the bed, as though seated on a horse, with a basin of soupe before one. It was thus that, for a year, I took all meals that I did not have at my hotel.
At the head of each bed hung a cavalry-sword and bag of stable-brushes and cleaning-kit; while above each were a couple of shelves bearing folded uniforms covered with a canvas bag on which was painted their owner's matricule number. Crowning each edifice was a shako and two pairs of boots. Cavalry carbines stood in racks in the corners of the room. . . . As I stared round, the Sergeant put his hand on my arm.
"You'll have a rough time here," he said. "Your only chance will be to be rougher than the time."
"I am going to be a real rough, Sergeant," I smiled. I liked this Sergeant de Poncey from the first.
"The worst of it is that it stays, my son," replied Sergeant de Poncey. "Habit becomes second nature--and then first nature. As I told you, I was a gentleman once; and now I am going to ask you to lend me twenty francs, for I am in serious trouble. . . . Will you?"
"No,
