Sergeant," I said, and his unhappy face darkened with pain and annoyance. "I am going to give you a hundred, if I may. . . . Will you?"
"You'll have a friend in me," was the reply, and the poor fellow positively flushed--I supposed with mingled emotions of gratitude, relief and discomfort.
And a good friend Sergeant de Poncey proved, and particularly valuable after he became Sergeant-Major; for though a Sergeant-Major may not have power to permit certain doings, he has complete power to prevent Higher Authority from knowing that they have been done. . . .
A Corporal entering the room at that minute, Sergeant de Poncey called him and handed me over to him with the words:
"A recruit for your escouade, Lepage. A Volontaire--but a good fellow. Old friend of mine. . . . See?"
The Corporal saw. He had good eyesight; for the moment Sergeant de Poncey was out of earshot, he added:
"Come and be an 'old friend' of mine too," and led the way out of the quartiers, across the great barrack-square, to the canteen.
Cheaply and greasily handsome, the swarthy Corporal Lepage was a very wicked little man indeed, but likeable, by reason of an unfailing sense of humour and a paradoxical trustworthiness. He had every vice and would do any evil thing--except betray a trust or fail a friend. Half educated, he was a clerk by profession, and an ornament of the city of Paris. Small, dissipated and drunken, he yet had remarkable strength and agility, and was never ill.
In the canteen he drank neat cognac at my expense, and frankly said that his goodwill and kind offices could be purchased for ten francs. I purchased them, and, having pouched the gold piece and swallowed his seventh cognac, the worthy man inquired whether I intended to jabber there the entire day, or go to the medical inspection to which he was endeavouring to conduct me.
"This is the first I have heard of it, Corporal," I protested.
"Well, it won't be the last, Mr. Snipe, unless you obey my orders and cease this taverning, chambering and wantonness," replied the good Lepage. "Hurry, you idle apprentice and worthless Volontaire."
I hurried.
Pulling himself together, Corporal Lepage marched me from the canteen to the dispensary near by.
The place was empty save for an Orderly.
"Surgeon-Major not come yet, Corporal," said the man.
Lepage turned upon me.
"Perhaps you'll let me finish my coffee in peace another time," he said, in apparent wrath, and displaying sharp little teeth beneath his waxed moustache. "Come back and do your duty."
And promising the Orderly that I would give him a cognac if he came and called the Corporal from the canteen as soon as the Surgeon-Major returned, he led the way back.
In the end, I left Corporal Lepage drunk in the canteen, passed the medical examination, and made myself a friend for life by returning and getting the uplifted warrior safely back to the barrack-room and bed.
An amusing morning.
§ 5
I shall never forget being tailored by the Sergent-Fourrier that afternoon. His store was a kind of mighty shop in which the Regimental Sergeant-Tailor, Sergeant-Bootmaker Sergeant-Saddler and Sergeant-Storekeeper were his shop-assistants.
Here I was given a pair of red trousers to try on--"for size." They were as stiff, as heavy, and nearly as big, as a diver's suit and clogs, and from the knees downwards were of solid leather.
They were not riding-breeches, but huge trousers, the legs being each as big round as my waist. As in the case of an axiom of Euclid, no demonstration was needed, but since the Sergeant-Tailor bade me get into them--I got.
When the heavy leather ends of them rested on the ground, the top cut me under the arm-pits. The top of that inch-thick, red felt garment, hard and stiff as a board, literally cut me.
I looked over the edge and smiled at the Sergeant-Tailor.
"Yes," he agreed, "excellent," and handed me a blue tunic to try on, "for size." The only faults in this case were that my hands were invisible within the sleeves, and that I could put my chin inside the collar after it had been hooked. I flapped my wings at the Sergeant-Tailor.
"Yes, you go into that nicely, too," he said, and he was quite right. That there was room for him, as well, did not seem to be of importance.
The difficulty now was to move, as the trousers seemed to be like jointless armour, but I struggled across the store to where sat the Sergeant-Bootmaker, with an entire range of boots of all sizes awaiting me. The "entire range" consisted of four pairs, and of these the smallest was two inches too long, but would not permit the passage of my instep.
They were curious leather buildings, these alleged boots. They were as wide as they were long, were perfectly square at both ends, had a leg a foot high, heels two and a half inches thick, and great rusty spurs nailed on to them.
The idea was to put them on under the trousers.
"You've got deformed feet, oh, espèce d'imbécile," said the Sergeant-Bootmaker, when his complete range of four sizes had produced nothing suitable. "You ought not to be in the army. The likes of you are a curse and an undeserved punishment to good Sergeants, you orphaned Misfortune of God. . . . Put on the biggest pair. . . ."
"But, Sergeant," I protested, "they are exactly five inches longer than my feet!"
"And is straw so dear in a cavalry regiment that you cannot stuff the toes with it, Most Complete Idiot?" inquired the man of ideas.
"But they'd simply fall off my feet if I tried to walk in them," I pointed out.
"And will not the straps of your trousers, that go underneath the boots, keep the boots on your feet, Most Polished and Perfected Idiot?" replied this prince of bootmakers. "And the trousers will hide the fact that the boots are a little large."
As all I had to do was to get from the barracks to my hotel, where I had everything awaiting me, it did not so much matter. But what of the poor devil who had to accept such things without alternative?
When I was standing precariously balanced inside these boots and garments, the Sergent-Fourrier gave me a Hussar shako which my ears insecurely supported; wound a blue scarf round my neck, inside the collar of the tunic, and bade me go and show myself to the Captain of the Week--who was incidentally Capitaine en Second of my Squadron.
Dressed as I was, I would not willingly have shown myself to a mule, lest the poor animal laugh itself into a state of dangerous hysteria.
Walking as a diver walks along the deck of a ship, I plunged heavily forward, lifting and dropping a huge boot, that hung at the end of a huge trouser-leg, at each step.
It was more like the progression of a hobbled clown-elephant over the tan of a circus, than the marching of a smart Hussar. I felt very foolish, humiliated and angry.
Guided by a storeroom Orderly, I eventually reached the door of the Captain's office, and burst upon his sight.
