"Then it's all right. Good-bye, sonny—good-bye!"
As I went out the other men were sitting on the benches doing the various odd jobs which were part of life in the Legion. They rubbed and polished—polished and rubbed. At that time they were hardly more to me than a passer-by in the street. Now, I confess, the face of every one of them is indelibly burnt into my brain.
I was to be subjected to a final annoyance.
The sergeant of the guard stopped me at the gate of the barracks, because in my excitement I had buttoned up my overcoat on the wrong side. He said he had a good mind to turn me back for my carelessness.
"Nom de Dieu! you pig, don't you know that this month the overcoats are buttoned on the right side?"
But he let me go. Through the crowd of légionnaires I hurried down the promenade. The first place I had to go to was the "Crédit Lyonnais," the famous French bank which had a branch in Sidi-bel-Abbès near the Place Sadi Carnot. The greater part of my money consisted of Belgian banknotes, which naturally were not in circulation in Algeria, and I thought I should be able to have them changed at the bank more quickly and cheaply than anywhere else. There I made a mistake. The clerk at the counter explained in a roundabout way that Belgian banknotes were of no use to them, and that it would cost a lot of money to send them to Paris. He was only greedy, of course (everybody in Sidi-bel-Abbès is), and trying to get an especially high commission out of me. Perhaps he thought that a légionnaire should be too pleased at having so much money to bother about a few francs more or less. There he was in error. I replied I should complain to the colonel of my regiment that the only bank in Sidi-bel-Abbès tried to overcharge a simple soldier. Whereupon this greedy clerk of a world-famous bank grumblingly took my notes and gave me French money for them.
Through the brightly illuminated main streets, saluting officers right and left, I hurried to the Ghetto. In the very first alley of the Ghetto I met an old fellow who looked promising. I tapped him on the shoulder.
"Eh! Civilian clothes?"
The Jew raised his forefinger warningly.
"Can't sell to légionnaires."