about him, unless it was his enthusiastic excitement, which might almost
be attributed to my jack-in-the-box manner of arriving. He said: "There
are people here who speak English, Russian, Arabian. There are the finest
people here! Did you go to Gre? I fought rats all night there. Huge ones.
They tried to eat me. And from Gre to Paris? I had three gendarmes all
the way to keep me from escaping, and they all fell asleep."

I began to be afraid that I was asleep myself. "Please be frank," I
begged. "Strictly _entre nous_: am I dreaming, or is this a bug-house?"

B. laughed, and said: "I thought so when I arrived two days ago. When I
came in sight of the place a lot of girls waved from the window and
yelled at me. I no sooner got inside than a queer looking duck whom I
took to be a nut came rushing up to me and cried: 'Too late for
soup!'--This is Campe de Triage de la Ferte Mace, Orne, France, and all
these fine people were arrested as spies. Only two or three of them can
speak a word of French, and that's _soupe!_"

I said, "My God, I thought Marseilles was somewhere on the Mediterranean
Ocean, and that this was a _gendarmerie_."

"But this is M-a-c-e. It's a little mean town, where everybody snickers
and sneers at you if they see you're a prisoner. They did at me."

"Do you mean to say we're _espions_ too?"

"Of course!" B. said enthusiastically. "Thank God! And in to stay. Every
time I think of the _section sanitaire_, and A. and his thugs, and the
whole rotten red-taped Croix Rouge, I have to laugh. Cummings, I tell you
this is the finest place on earth!"