_Vive les plantons._ He
should have been a _gendarme_.
Of course Rockyfeller, having copiously tipped the officials of La Ferte
upon his arrival, received no slightest censure nor any hint of
punishment for his deliberate breaking an established rule--a rule for
the breaking of which anyone of the common scum (e.g., thank God, myself)
would have got _cabinot de suite_. No indeed. Several of _les hommes_,
however, got _pain sec_--not because they had been caught in an act of
vociferous protestation by the Black Holster, which they had not--but
just on principle, as a warning to the rest of us and to teach us a
wholesome respect for (one must assume) law and order. One and all, they
heartily agreed that it was worth it. Everyone knew, of course, that the
Spy had peached. For, by Jove, even in The Enormous Room there was a man
who earned certain privileges and acquired a complete immunity from
punishment by squealing on his fellow-sufferers at each and every
opportunity. A really ugly person, with a hard knuckling face and
treacherous hands, whose daughter lived downstairs in a separate room
apart from _les putains_ (against which "dirty," "filthy," "whores" he
could not say enough--"Hi'd rather die than 'ave my daughter with them
stinkin' 'ores," remarked once to me this strictly moral man, in Cockney
English) and whose daughter (aged thirteen) was generally supposed to
serve in a pleasurable capacity.
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