Even as the plantons fumbled with the locks I heard the inimitable, unmistakable divine laugh of a negro. The door opened at last. Entered a beautiful pillar of black strutting muscle topped with a tremendous display of the whitest teeth on earth. The muscle bowed politely in our direction, the grin remarked musically: “Bo’jour, tou’l’monde”; then came a cascade of laughter. Its effect on the spectators was instantaneous: they roared and danced with joy. “Comment vous appelez-vous?” was fired from the hubbub.—“J’m’appelle Jean, moi,” the muscle rapidly answered with sudden solemnity, proudly gazing to left and right as if expecting a challenge to this statement: but when none appeared, it relapsed as suddenly into laughter—as if hugely amused at itself and everyone else including a little and tough boy, whom I had not previously noted, although his entrance had coincided with the muscle’s.
Thus into the misère of La Ferté Macé stepped lightly and proudly Jean le Nègre.
Of all the fine people in La Ferté, Monsieur Jean (“le noir” as he was entitled by his enemies) swaggers in my memory as the finest.
Jean’s first act was to complete the distribution (begun, he announced, among the plantons who had escorted him upstairs) of two pockets full of Cubebs. Right and left he gave them up to the last, remarking carelessly, “J’ne veux, moi.”
Après la soupe (which occurred a few minutes after le noir’s entry) B. and I and the greater number of prisoners descended to the cour for our afternoon promenade. The cook spotted us immediately and desired us to “catch water”; which we did, three cartfuls of it, earning our usual café sucré. On quitting the kitchen after this delicious repast (which as usual mitigated somewhat the effects of the swill that was our official nutriment) we entered the cour. And we noticed at once a well-made figure standing conspicuously by itself, and poring with extraordinary intentness over the pages of a London Daily Mail which it was holding upside-down. The reader was culling choice bits of news of a highly sensational nature, and exclaiming from time to time: “You don’t say! Look, the King of England is sick. Some news!… What? The queen too? Good God! What’s this?—My father is dead! Oh, well. The war is over. Good.”—It was Jean le Nègre, playing a little game with himself to beguile the time.
When we had mounted à la chambre, two or three tried to talk with this extraordinary personage in French; at which he became very superior and announced: “J’suis anglais, moi. Parlez anglais. Comprends pas français, moi.” At this a crowd escorted him over to B. and me—anticipating great deeds in the English language. Jean looked at us critically and said: “Vous parlez anglais? Moi parlez anglais.”—“We are Americans, and speak English,” I answered.—“Moi anglais,” Jean said. “Mon père, capitaine de gendarmes, Londres. Comprends pas français, moi. SPEE-Kingliss”—he laughed all over himself.
At this display of English on Jean’s part the English-speaking Hollanders began laughing. “The son of a bitch is crazy,” one said.
And from that moment B. and I got on famously with Jean.
His mind was a child’s. His use of language was sometimes exalted fibbing, sometimes the purely picturesque. He courted above all the sound of words, more or less disdaining their meaning. He told us immediately (in pidgeon French) that he was born without a mother because his mother died when he was born, that his father was (first) sixteen (then) sixty years old, that his father gagnait cinq cent franc par jour (later, par année), that he was born in London and not in England, that he was in the French army and had never been in any army.
He did not, however, contradict himself in one statement: “Les français sont des cochons”—to which we heartily agreed, and which won him the approval of the Hollanders.