"
"I knew a gendarme who was all right," said Lamuse. "'The police are
temperate enough in general,' he says, 'but there are always dirty
devils everywhere, pas? The civilian is really afraid of the
gendarme,' says he, 'and that's a fact; and so, I admit it, there
are some who take advantage of it, and those ones--the tag-rag of
the gendarmerie--know where to get a glass or two. If I was Chief or
Brigadier, I'd screw 'em down; not half I wouldn't,' he says; 'for
public opinion,' he says again. 'lays the blame on the whole force
when a single one with a grievance makes a complaint.'"
"As for me," says Paradis, "one of the worst days of my life was
once when I saluted a gendarme, taking him for a lieutenant, with
his white stripes. Fortunately--I don't say it to console myself,
but because it's probably true--fortunately, I don't think he saw
me."
A silence. "Oui, 'vidently," the men murmured; "but what about it?
No need to worry."
* * * * * *
A little later, when we were seated along a wall, with our backs to
the stones, and our feet plunged and planted in the ground, Volpatte
continued unloading his impressions.
"I went into a big room that was a Depot office--bookkeeping
department, I believe. It swarmed with tables, and people in it like
in a market. Clouds of talk. All along the walls on each side and in
the middle, personages sitting in front of their spread-out goods
like waste-paper merchants. I put in a request to be put back into
my regiment, and they said to me, 'Take your damned hook, and get
busy with it.
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