their _marraines_, pointed at by sinewy dames and decrepit
_bonhommes_--the centre of amusement for the whole station. In spite of
my reading I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Would it never be Twelve?
Here comes the younger, neat as a pin, looking fairly sterilized. He sits
down on my left. Watches are ostentatiously consulted. It is time. _En
avant._ I sling myself under my bags.

"Where are we going now?" I asked the older. Curling the tips of his
mustachios, he replied, "Mah-say."

Marseilles! I was happy once more. I had always wanted to go to that
great port of the Mediterranean, where one has new colors and strange
customs, and where the people sing when they talk. But how extraordinary
to have come to Paris--and what a trip lay before us. I was much muddled
about the whole thing. Probably I was to be deported. But why from
Marseilles? Where was Marseilles anyway? I was probably all wrong about
its location. Who cared, after all? At least we were leaving the
pointings and the sneers and the half-suppressed titters....

Two fat and respectable _bonhommes_, the two _gendarmes_, and I, made up
one compartment. The former talked an animated stream, the guards and I
were on the whole silent. I watched the liquidating landscape and dozed
happily. The _gendarmes_ dozed, one at each door. The train rushed lazily
across the earth, between farmhouses, into fields, along woods ... the
sunlight smacked my eye and cuffed my sleepy mind with colour.

I was awakened by a noise of eating. My protectors, knife in hand, were
consuming their meat and bread, occasionally tilting their _bidons_ on
high and absorbing the thin streams which spurted therefrom. I tried a
little chocolate. The _bonhommes_ were already busy with their repast.