While I think of it. There is yet another very pretty piece of arithmetic. Little Jean was a thoughtful man. When he comes back home after his long years of Legion he will perhaps sit down and work out how much he has earned in these eight, long, hard years.
The example would look like this:
| Francs | |
| First year of service, 5 centimes a day | 18.25 |
| Second year of service, 5 centimes a day | 18.25 |
| Third year of service, 5 centimes a day | 18.25 |
| Fourth year of service, 10 centimes a day | 36.50 |
| Fifth year of service, 10 centimes a day | 36.50 |
| Grand Total | 127.75 |
The other three years? In these Little Jean worked free, gratis, for nothing. These three years were "rabiau," as they say in the Legion, of no use, superfluous. In his three "rabiau" years Little Jean naturally got no pay. Why should a convict get paid?
So you see Little Jean's earnings amounted to the grand total of 127 francs 75 centimes—earned in eight years. Besides all this, this worthless fellow had been fed all this time! And clothed into the bargain.
Yes—c'est la Légion!
The prison in the barracks at Sidi-bel-Abbès used always to loom before me like a threatening spectre.
On both sides of the entrance to the barracks, close to the road, but separated from it by a high wall, lay the two little houses with their flat tin roofs which caught the sun's rays so pitilessly. Inside there were rows and rows of cell doors in the long narrow corridors. The single cells were a little more than three yards long and one yard broad; the general cells were perhaps five yards square. There was no light, and a little hole in the wall and an opening over the door were the sole means of ventilation. The floor was flagged or of clay. There was a wooden bench in each cell, a water-jug, and an old tin pail. The single cells and the general cells were exactly alike in their "fittings"—whether five men or fifty were shut up in these cells made no difference! They got, according to the regulations, one water-jug and one pail! I was never (and even to-day that is a satisfaction to me) shut up in the Legion's prison. But I have seen enough, when I was on guard there, to have had quite enough of the prison without any nearer experience of it.
I repeat: five yards square, thirty, forty, or more occupants: an air-hole nine inches in diameter high up in the walls and a tiny crack over the door.