contemplated Ah Chow with mild curiosity. His head was to be cut off by
the guillotine that was being erected on the plantation. For him there
would be no declining years, no gardens of tranquillity. Ah Cho
philosophized and speculated about life and death. As for himself, he was
not perturbed. Twenty years were merely twenty years. By that much was
his garden removed from him--that was all. He was young, and the patience
of Asia was in his bones. He could wait those twenty years, and by that
time the heats of his blood would be assuaged and he would be better fitted
for that garden of calm delight. He thought of a name for it; he would
call it The Garden of the Morning Calm. He was made happy all day by the
thought, and he was inspired to devise a moral maxim on the virtue of
patience, which maxim proved a great comfort, especially to Wong Li and Ah
Tong. Ah Chow, however, did not care for the maxim. His head was to be
separated from his body in so short a time that he had no need for patience
to wait for that event. He smoked well, ate well, slept well, and did not
worry about the slow passage of time.

Cruchot was a gendarme. He had seen twenty years of service in the
colonies, from Nigeria and Senegal to the South Seas, and those twenty
years had not perceptibly brightened his dull mind. He was as slow-witted
and stupid as in his peasant days in the south of France. He knew
discipline and fear of authority, and from God down to the sergeant of
gendarmes the only difference to him was the measure of slavish obedience
which he rendered. In point of fact, the sergeant bulked bigger in his
mind than God, except on Sundays when God's mouthpieces had their say. God
was usually very remote, while the sergeant was ordinarily very close at
hand.

Cruchot it was who received the order from the Chief Justice to the jailer
commanding that functionary to deliver over to Cruchot the person of Ah