, did not agree
with some people's ideas, and that some people's ideas made them prefer
to the glories of the front line the torments (I have heard my friends at
Ham screaming a score of times) attendant upon venereal diseases. Or as
one of my aforesaid friends told me--after discovering that I was, in
contrast to _les americains_, not bent upon making France discover
America but rather upon discovering France and _les francais_ myself:
"_Mon vieux_, it's quite simple. I go on leave. I ask to go to Paris,
because there are prostitutes there who are totally diseased. I catch
syphilis, and, when possible gonorrhea also. I come back. I leave for the
front line. I am sick. The hospital. The doctor tells me: you must not
smoke or drink, then you will be cured quickly. 'Thanks, doctor!' I drink
all the time and I smoke all the time and I do not get well. I stay five,
six, seven weeks. Perhaps a few months. At last, I am well. I rejoin my
regiment. And now it is my turn to go on leave. I go. Again the same
thing. It's very pretty, you know."
But about the syphilitics at La Ferte: they were, somewhat tardily to be
sure, segregated in a very small and dirty room--for a matter of,
perhaps, two weeks. And the Surveillant actually saw to it that during
this period they ate _la soupe_ out of individual china bowls.
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