This method never
failed. To its efficacy many of the men and more of the girls (by whom
the _plantons_, owing to their habit of taking advantage of the weaker
sex at every opportunity, were even more despised) attested by not
infrequent spasms of consumptive coughing, which could be plainly heard
from the further end of one _cour_ to the other.
In a little over two hours I learned an astonishing lot about La Ferte
itself: it was a co-educational receiving station whither were sent from
various parts of France (a) males suspected of espionage and (b) females
of a well-known type found in the zone of the armies. It was pointed out
to me that the task of finding such members of the human race was _pas
difficile:_ in the case of the men, any foreigner would do provided his
country was neutral (e.g. Holland); as for the girls, inasmuch as the
armies of the Allies were continually retreating, the _zone des armees_
(particularly in the case of Belgium) was always including new cities,
whose _petites femmes_ became automatically subject to arrest. It was not
to be supposed that all the women of La Ferte were _putains_: there were
a large number of respectable women, the wives of prisoners, who met
their husbands at specified times on the floor below the men's quarters,
whither man and woman were duly and separately conducted by _plantons_.
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