bunch they struck me at the time and will always impress me as the next
to the lowest species of human organism; the lowest, in my experienced
estimation, being the _gendarme_ proper. The _plantons_ were, with one
exception--he of the black holster with whom I collided on the first
day--changed from time to time. Again with this one exception, they were
(as I have noted) apparently disabled men who were enjoying a vacation
from the trenches in the lovely environs of Orne. Nearly all of them were
witless. Every one of them had something the matter with him physically
as well. For instance, one _planton_ had a large wooden hand. Another was
possessed of a long unmanageable left leg made, as nearly as I could
discover, of tin. A third had a huge glass eye.

These peculiarities of physique, however, did not inhibit the _plantons_
from certain essential and normal desires. On the contrary. The
_plantons_ probably realised that, in competition with the male world at
large, their glass legs and tin hands and wooden eyes would not stand a
Chinaman's chance of winning the affection and admiration of the fair
sex. At any rate they were always on the alert for opportunities to
triumph over the admiration and affection of _les femmes_ at La Ferte,
where their success was not endangered by competition. They had the bulge
on everybody; and they used what bulge they had to such good advantage
that one of them, during my stay, was pursued with a revolver by their
sergeant, captured, locked up and shipped off for court-martial on the
charge of disobedience and threatening the life of a superior officer. He
had been caught with the goods--that is to say, in the girl's
_cabinot_--by said superior: an incapable, strutting, undersized,
bepimpled person in a bright uniform who spent his time assuming the
poses of a general for the benefit of the ladies; of his admiration for
whom and his intentions toward whom he made no secret. By all means one
of the most disagreeable petty bullies whom I ever beheld. This arrest of