Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/112

Rh thing. Often I pondered the unutterable and inextinguishable wisdom of the police, who—undeterred by facts which would have deceived less astute intelligences into thinking that these men were either too stupid or too simple to be connoisseurs of the art of betrayal—swooped upon their helpless prey with that indescribable courage which is the prerogative of policemen the world over, and bundled it into the La Fertés of that mighty nation upon some, at least, of whose public buildings it seems to me that I remember reading:

Liberté.

Egalité.

Fraternité.

And I wondered that France should have a use for Monsieur Auguste, who had been arrested (because he was a Russian) when his fellow munition workers struck and whose wife wanted him in Paris because she was hungry and because their child was getting to look queer and white. Monsieur Auguste, that desperate ruffian exactly five feet tall who—when he could not keep from crying (one must think about one's wife or even one's child once or twice, I merely presume, if one loves them—"et ma femme est très gen-tille, elle est fran-çaise et très belle, très, très belle, vraiment; elle n'est fas comme moi, un pet-it homme laide, ma femme est grande et belle, elle sait bien lire et é-crire, vraiment; et notre fils ... vous dev-ez voir notre pet-it fils....")—used to start up and cry out, taking B. by one arm and me by the other,

"Allons, mes amis! Chan-tons 'Quackquackquack.'"

Whereupon we would join in the following song, which Monsieur Auguste had taught us with great care, and whose renditions gave him unspeakable delight:

"Un canard, déployant chez elle (Quackquackquack) Il disait à sa canard fidèle (Quackquackquack) Il disait (Quackquackquack) Il faisait (Quackquackquack) Quind" (spelling mine)