So hearty did
these responses become one afternoon that, in answer to loud pleas from
the injured Moshki, the pimply _sergeant de plantons_ himself came to the
gate in the barbed wire fence and delivered a lecture upon the
seriousness of venereal ailments (heart-felt, I should judge by the looks
of him), as follows:
"_Il ne faut pas rigoler de ca. Savez-vous? C'est une maladie, ca,_"
which little sermon contrasted agreeably with his usual remarks
concerning, and in the presence of, _les femmes_, whereof the essence lay
in a single phrase of prepositional significance--
"_bon pour coucher avec_"
he would say shrilly, his puny eyes assuming an expression of amorous
wisdom which was most becoming....
One day we were all upon afternoon promenade, (it being _beau temps_ for
that part of the world), under the auspices of by all odds one of the
littlest and mildest and most delicate specimens of mankind that ever
donned the high and dangerous duties of a _planton_. As B. says: "He
always looked like a June bride." This mannikin could not have been five
feet high, was perfectly proportioned (unless we except the musket upon
his shoulder and the bayonet at his belt), and minced to and fro with a
feminine grace which suggested--at least to _les deux citoyens_ of These
United States--the extremely authentic epithet "fairy.
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