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All other folks slumbered and took their rest: Vaekehu, the native Queen, in her trim house under the rustling palms; the Tahitian commissary, in his beflagged official residence; the merchants, in their deserted stores; and even the club-servant in the club, his head fallen forward on the bottle-counter, under the map of the world and the cards of navy officers.
Retire, then, with the blessing of God. Great was the stupefaction of the friar when he was told that he was under arrest. 'What! exclaimed he, 'will you dare lay your hands on a Commissary of the holy Inquisition? 'I dare obey orders, replied the undaunted officer, and the reverend Father Antonio de Sedella was instantly carried on board of a vessel, which sailed the next day for Cadiz.
The gloomy masonry dripped with damp, the doors were thickly studded with heavy iron spikes; old cannon, thrust endwise into the ground at the sides of the gate, protected it against passing wheels. Why did not some semi-forbidding commissary of police, struggling hard to overcome his native politeness, appear and demand their passports?
Your lordships will forgive us; for, unable to support his cruelties, we are compelled to speak. Your commissary has nothing of the man but the shape, nor of a Florentine but the name; a more deadly pest, a more savage beast, a more horrid monster never was imagined in the human mind; for, having assembled us in our church under pretense of wishing to speak with us, he made us prisoners.
I could swear to them anywhere." "Then you can't protest the cheque?" "Unfortunately, no; it's my own true signature." We went that afternoon without delay to see the Chief Commissary of Police at the office.
His health soon gave out, when he was succeeded by Captain Comstock, also of the Engineer Corps. To provide assistants on such a long line I directed that all officers who had graduated at West Point, where they had necessarily to study military engineering, should in addition to their other duties assist in the work. The chief quartermaster and the chief commissary were graduates.
Accordingly forty men turned out under Captain Robert Patterson. They were given ammunition, as well as two pack-horses, by the Commissary Department. Every man was entitled to pay for the time he was out. Whether he would ever get it was problematical; at the best it was certain to be given him in worthless paper-money.
Fortunately, the local commissary of police believed their story, and they were sent back to Paris to face the horseflesh and the many other hardships which they had particularly desired to avoid. I also remember the representative of a Birmingham small-arms factory telling me of his unsuccessful attempt to escape.
"That's just what I want to know," the Commissary answered, in his curious American-French-English. "He is a Colonel, because he occasionally gives himself a commission; he is called Colonel Clay, because he appears to possess an india-rubber face, and he can mould it like clay in the hands of the potter. Real name, unknown. Nationality, equally French and English. Address, usually Europe.
But he had replied by his head clerk, Pierre Frater, that he was in bed; the marquise insisted, begging them to rouse him up, for she wanted a box that she could not allow to have opened. The clerk then went up to the Sieur Picard's bedroom, but came back saying that what the marquise demanded was for the time being an impossibility, for the commissary was asleep.
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