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Updated: June 5, 2025
Fritz, having chinned himself fifteen times, suddenly appeared astride of the bar, evoking a reprimand; Pompom bowled the planton with the cannon-ball, apologising in profuse and vile French; Harree the Hollander tossed the wagon-axle lightly half the length of the cour, missing The Bear by an inch; The Bear bided his time and cleverly hurled a large stick into one of the holy trees, bringing to the ground a withered apple for which at least twenty people fought for several minutes; and so on.
Such amazement as dominated his puny features I have rarely seen equalled. "Qu'est-ce que vous avez foutu avec cette machine-la?" At which cry the planton staggered, rotated, brought his gun clumsily off his shoulder, and stared, trembling all over with emotion, at his superior. "La-bas!" screamed the pimply sergeant de plantons, pointing fiercely in our direction.
To no avail I called the planton a menteur, a voleur, a fils d'un chien, and various other names. But again like an inconsolable child who weeps his heart out when no human comfort avails and wakes the next day without an apparent trace of the recent grief Jean le Negre, in the course of the next twenty-four hours, had completely recovered his normal buoyancy of spirit.
La commission, as I have said, visited La Ferte every three months. I consider this one of the luckiest things in my life. La commission arrived one morning, and began work immediately. A list was made of les hommes who were to pass la commission, another of les femmes. These lists were given to the planton with the Wooden Hand.
He was a rare spirit, and I salute him wherever he is. Mexique was a good friend of Pete's, as he was of ours. He had been introduced to us by a man we called One Eyed David, who was married and had a wife downstairs, with which wife he was allowed to live all day being conducted to and from her society by a planton.
Out of the corner of my eye I beheld the planton now on both knees, musket held to his shoulder by his left arm and pointing unflinchingly at us one and all hunting with his right arm and hand in his belt for cartridges!
The planton who suffered all these indignities was a solemn youth with wise eyes situated very far apart in a mealy expressionless elipse of face, to the lower end of which clung a piece of down, exactly like a feather sticking to an egg. The rest of him was fairly normal with the exception of his hands, which were not mates; the left being considerably larger, and made of wood.
The Imp shinnied like a monkey, shouting and crowing, up a lean gnarled limb to the amazement of the very planton who later tried to rape Celina and was caught. This planton put his gun in readiness and assumed an eager attitude of immutable heroism. "Will you shoot?" the father inquired politely.
"Qu'est-ce que vous faites," etc., and the planton gave me a good shove in the direction of another flight of stairs. I obligingly ascended; thinking of the Surveillant as a spider, elegantly poised in the centre of his nefarious web, waiting for a fly to make too many struggles.... At the top of this flight I was confronted by a second hall.
One pushing behind, one pulling in the shafts, we rushed the wagon over a sort of threshold or sill and into the street; and were immediately yelled at by the planton, who commanded us to stop until he had locked the door. We waited until told to proceed; then yanked and shoved the reeling vehicle up the street to our right, that is to say, along the wall of the building, but on the outside.
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