My companion—is a muscular man of thirty, without front teeth; his thin lips are always curved in a bad smile; his brain is such that he cannot think and speak of anything that would not be vulgar and vicious.
The very first night we came to change sentinels—I felt embarrassed, as I do not know the ritual; but—there is nothing military about these things nowadays, all is abolished. The soldiers come to change sentinels, talk freely, laugh loudly. Instead of military traditions—like parole, pass-words, exchange of salutes, etc., etc.,—they ask:
"Ah, howdy! What are "they" (meaning the prisoners) doing? Anything to look at? All right—now you go, we'll stay."
They have, however, a tradition. When the changed jailors are assembled near the entrance,—they start to knock on the rain pipes of the Mansion with their rifles, to throw sand and small stones into the windows of the Heir and the Princesses. When they think enough frightening has been done, they start to sing something hideous and pornographic.
"She went to the ma-a-rket,
Bought a bell as a locket…."
begins a thin trembling voice very calmly and even bashfully, as if nothing bad will come out of this quiet song. And then, suddenly, a chorus of twelve big fat swine would belch the notorious refrain:
"Ah, you brunette of mine,
O-oh, curly girl of mine…."
and so forth, with the licentious words of this song accompanying it with whistles and jazzing with bayonettes, field-pans and general noise.
I tried to analyze all of this. Why? Why is there such a hatred for these,—this poor man, these five women and a boy? Such unnecessary torture of people of the past,—nothing but a man who awaits the end of his tragedy, nothing but a frail boy, nothing but five trembling ladies. And the picture of the old woman that broke her hip on the deck—and provoked laughter, comes to me.
The second day of my occupation,—it was about eleven when the sentinels were changed and the night was warm and bluish, the demonstration, perhaps in my honor, was exceptionally noisy and obscene.