CHAPTER FOUR
THE SMUGGLERS
Some centuries ago the windows of my house abandoned on the marsh looked out upon a bay gay with the ships of Spanish pirates, for in those days Pont du Sable served them as a secret refuge for repairs. Hauled up to the tawny marsh were strange craft with sails of apple-green, rose, vermilion and sinister black; there were high sterns pierced by carved cabin-windows—some of them iron-barred, to imprison ladies of high or low degree and unfortunate gentlemen who fought bravely to defend them. From oaken gunwales glistened slim cannon, their throats swabbed clean after some wholesale murder on the open seas. Yes, it must have been a lively enough bay some centuries ago!
To-day Pont du Sable goes to bed without even turning the key in the lock. This is because of a vast army of simple men whose word, in France, is law.
To begin with, there are the President of the République and the Ministers of War and Agriculture, and Monsieur the Chief of Police—a kind little man in Paris whom it is better to agree with—and the préfet and the sous-préfet—all the way down the line of authority to the red-faced, blustering chef de gare at Pont du Sable—and Pierre.