He wagged his head till I thought
it would have tumbled off. Even the mustache seemed amused. Monsieur le
Ministre de la Surete de Noyon bit his lip. "Never mind writing that
down," he directed the lawyer. Then, returning to the charge:
"You had a great deal of trouble with Lieutenant A.?"
I laughed outright at this complimentary nomenclature. "Yes, we certainly
did."
He asked: "Why?"--so I sketched "Lieutenant" A. in vivid terms, making
use of certain choice expressions with which one of the "dirty Frenchmen"
attached to the section, a Parisien, master of argot, had furnished me.
My phraseology surprised my examiners, one of whom (I think the
moustache) observed sarcastically that I had made good use of my time in
Paris.
Monsieur le Ministre asked: Was it true (a) that B. and I were always
together and (b) preferred the company of the attached Frenchmen to that
of our fellow-Americans?--to which I answered in the affirmative. Why? he
wanted to know. So I explained that we felt that the more French we knew
and the better we knew the French the better for us; expatiating a bit on
the necessity for a complete mutual understanding of the Latin and
Anglo-Saxon races if victory was to be won.
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