General de Négrier said that the Legion could do anything—from the building of a bridge, to the writing of an opera, to the painting of a picture—all the genius that civilization has turned away from its doors is here at command—for a halfpenny a day.
The sun had touched the upper border of the huge blank eastern wall of the Legion's barracks and it was still a few minutes before réveillé, when in room Number 6 of the tenth company the garde-chambre for the day slipped from his bed, stretched and yawned noiselessly, and glanced round him.
The room was like the ward of a hospital, and the likeness was made no less striking by the card above each of the twenty beds, a white card setting out each man's name and number.
Jacques' number, as shown by the card on the bed he had just vacated, was 7,083.
Jacques Radoub, known always and everywhere as Jacques, tout court, was a small and wiry-looking individual with the face of a gamin, that is to say, the face of a child who is a jester, who may be a cut-throat, and who is certainly and above all things a Parisian.
Jacques had, in fact, been an Apache by profession, and Monsieur Lepine had given him the choice between a penitentiary and the Legion. He chose the Legion, because, as he said, he liked the name better.
He was quite aware that life in the Legion was as hard as life in a penitentiary, and he did not care a button about the social difference; he liked the name better, that was all. He was an artist.
He stood now, for a second, glancing at the others, nineteen men stretched in all the attitudes of slumber. Germans, French, an Englishman, an American, a Greek and a Russian. Then, shuffling on some clothes, he left the room silently as the shadow of a moving cat.
In a moment he was back with a huge jug of steaming coffee, and as he entered shouting to the others to wake up, the réveillé came from the barrack yard. The réveillé of the French Army that sounds every morning across France to find its echo in Algeria.
"Rat tat tat ta, Rat tat tat ta,
Rat tat tat ta ta ta ta.
Rat tat tat ta, Rat tat tat ta,
Rat tat tat ta, tat ta."