Curious thing. Often I
pondered the unutterable and inextinguishable wisdom of the police,
who--undeterred by facts which would have deceived less astute
intelligences into thinking that these men were either too stupid or too
simple to be connoisseurs of the art of betrayal--swooped upon their
helpless prey with that indescribable courage which is the prerogative of
policemen the world over, and bundled it into the La Fertes of that
mighty nation upon some, at least, of whose public buildings it seems to
me that I remember reading:
Liberte.
Egalite.
Fraternite.
And I wondered that France should have a use for Monsieur Auguste, who
had been arrested (because he was a Russian) when his fellow munition
workers struck and whose wife wanted him in Paris because she was hungry
and because their child was getting to look queer and white. Monsieur
Auguste, that desperate ruffian exactly five feet tall who--when he could
not keep from crying (one must think about one's wife or even one's child
once or twice, I merely presume, if one loves them--"_et ma femme est
tres gen-tille, elle est fran-caise et tres belle, tres, tres belle,
vraiment; elle n'est fas comme moi, un pet-it homme laide, ma femme est
grande et belle, elle sait bien lire et e-crire, vraiment; et notre fils
.
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