of public health) as well as a knife which belonged to the kitchen and
had been lent to The Barber for the purpose of peeling potatoes--he
having complained that the extraordinary safety-device with which, on
alternate days, we were ordinarily furnished for that purpose, was an
insult to himself and his profession--vanished into the rather thick air
of Orne along with The Barber _lui-meme_. I remember him perfectly in The
Enormous Room, cutting apples deliberately with his knife and sharing
them with the Young Russian. The night of the escape--in order to keep up
our morale--we were helpfully told that both refugees had been snitched
e'er they had got well without the limits of the town, and been remanded
to a punishment consisting among other things, in _travaux forces a
perpetuite--verbum sapientibus_, he that hath ears, etc. Also a nightly
inspection was instituted; consisting of our being counted thrice by a
_planton_, who then divided the total by three and vanished.

_Soi-meme_ reminds me of a pleasant spirit who graced our little company
with a good deal of wit and elegance. He was called by B. and myself,
after a somewhat exciting incident which I must not describe, but rather
outline, by the agreeable title of Meme le Balayeur. Only a few days
after my arrival the incident in question happened. It seems (I was in
_la cour_ promenading for the afternoon) that certain more virile
inhabitants of The Enormous Room, among them Harree and Pom Pom _bien
entendu_, declined to _se promener_ and kept their habitat. Now this was
in fulfilment of a little understanding with three or more girls--such as
Celina, Lily and Renee--who, having also declined the promenade, managed
in the course of the afternoon to escape from their quarters on the
second floor, rush down the hall and upstairs, and gain that landing on
which was the only and well-locked door to The Enormous Room. The next
act of this little comedy (or tragedy, as it proved for the participants,
who got _cabinot_ and _pain sec_--male and female alike--for numerous