"But they have burnt the chairs," wailed the deputation.
"I'm very glad they have not burned anything else," laughed the colonel. "You leave my men in peace and they'll let you alone."
Since that time the honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès has been rather more careful in his treatment of the Legion. It is true that an order of the town council says that a légionnaire can only get a ticket for the gallery in the town's theatre, but if a légionnaire with superfluous money wants a seat in the stalls, he can nevertheless get it. The honest citizen has learnt to respect the Legion's feelings.
But, under the surface, the citizen's contempt of the Legion naturally remained. The soldier of the foreign regiment puts out the fires which break out in Sidi-bel-Abbès, he saves the citizens and their goods when the stream of the Mekerra becomes a roaring torrent in the rainy season, and he protects the helpless townspeople when the descendants of the Beni Amer try to institute the Jewish persecutions they are so fond of…. He does all that. But the poor devil of a mercenary has no money, and this is the Mortal Sin.
One quarter of the town was taboo to us légionnaires, strictly forbidden under a penalty of a month's imprisonment: the "village nègre," the negro town, the home of every sort of disease and crime. The beasts in human forms which house there had more than once killed a légionnaire to rob him of his sash or some such trifle.
Forbidden things always have a mysterious power of attraction, and I was burning with curiosity. Slowly, keeping a sharp look-out for patrols, I crossed the big drill-ground one night and turned, close behind the mosque, into the maze of huts. It was a pitch-dark night, and I kept falling over the dirt-heaps and tripping in the holes in the hard trodden ground.
At last I saw lights. The main street of the village nègre lay before me, a narrow little alley. I could have touched the walls on either side with outstretched arms. The miserable low houses were half in ruins, and irregular holes took the place of doors and windows. The alley, but a few paces long, was brightly illuminated by the light of half a dozen torches stuck in holes in the walls.
In this narrow space the vice of Sidi-bel-Abbès was hidden. Songs and cries and shrieks filled the air. Before the huts women were sitting, poor prostitutes, who sold themselves for a few coppers and a drink of absinthe. Here was vice in its most primitive form. The night was cold. Braziers with glowing coals stood before every hut, and women crouched over them that they might better warm their bodies at the warmth of the fire. Modesty seemed to be a thing unknown. A negress with a figure full of strength lay there stretched at full length almost naked, with the warmth-giving firepan beside her. She was too worn out or too lazy to speak, she merely invited the passers-by with a gesture to come into her hut. Near her a Frenchwoman, in whose face her awful life had cut deep furrows, sat in a torn silk dress on the bare ground. Beside them Arabian girls crouched, children almost, the copper bangles on their arms and legs showing that they were from the far South. Italian women, with the characteristic gold earrings of their race, and Spaniards, with oily shining hair, quarrelled in high-pitched voices. The blazing light of the torches gave their faces an uncanny look. In the midst of these miserable women moved the scum of the population of Sidi-bel-Abbès. There were negroes in ragged linen coats who in daytime carried heavy burdens on their backs and spent their evenings regularly in the village nègre. Spanish labourers chattered and gesticulated with the Spanish girls. It was the meeting-place of the poor and the wretched, a corso of humanity at its worst.
My bayonet rattling gently against the steel sheath startled the men and women. When they saw that they only had to deal with a single légionnaire and not with one of the much-feared patrols, they cried out to me from all sides—in a curious patois of low French mixed with Arabic. The little I understood of it was quite enough. The language of the légionnaire leaves nothing wanting in the way of force and clearness—the language of the village nègre was filth condensed. Two negresses began to quarrel as to whether a common légionnaire could be in possession of even one sou, a weighty question which was answered in the negative amid much laughter. The Frenchwoman, who was anything but sober, poked me in the ribs and begged me, hiccoughing, for a "petite absinthe." Obscene gestures and drunken cries everywhere. And in the corner there leaned in dignified repose an Arab policeman.