Crossing the road, I pushed open a rusty iron gate, undeterred by its agonised or warning shriek, crossed the neglected cemetery garden of this gay place, thrust back a swing door, and entered a long dark passage.
I could see no notice recommending all to abandon hope who entered here, but my drooping spirits were unraised by a strangling odour of carbolic, coal-gas, and damp.
On the wall was a big placard which, in the sacred names of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, offered to accept for five years the services of any applicant for admission to La Legion Étrangère (provided he was between the ages of eighteen and forty), and to give him a wage of a halfpenny a day.
There seemed to me to be little of Liberty about this proposal, less of Equality, and least of Fraternity.
On the other hand, it was an engagement volontaire, and anyone who didn't like the offer could leave it. No one was compelled to accept it, and there was no deception--on the placard at any rate.
I read the notice through again, half hoping that while I did so, someone would come and ask my business, some sound break the heavy smelly silence of Glory's cradle.
But none did, and "with well-feigned hopefulness I pushed forth into the gloom."
Venturing on, I came to a kind of booking-office ticket-window, above which were repeated the words Engagements Volontaires.
I looked in, and in a severe office or orderly-room, beheld an austere person in uniform, seated at a table and writing busily. The two gold stripes above his cuff inclined me to suppose that he was a non-commissioned officer, though of what rank and eminence I knew not.
He ignored me and all other insects.
How to attract his attention?
I coughed gently and apologetically. I coughed appealingly. I coughed upbraidingly, sorrowfully, suggestively, authoritatively, meekly, imperiously, agreeably, hopefully, hopelessly, despairingly, and quite vainly. Evidently I should not cough my way to glory.
"Monsieur le Capitaine," I murmured ingratiatingly.
The man looked up. I liked him better when looking down.
"Monsieur would appear to have a throat-trouble," he observed.
"And Monsieur an ear-trouble," I replied, in my young ignorance and folly.
"What is Monsieur's business?" he enquired sharply.
"I wish to join the Légion Étrangère," I said.
The man smiled, a little unpleasantly, I thought.
"Eh, bien," he remarked, "doubtless Monsieur will have much innocent amusement at the expense of the Sergeant-Major there too," and I was quite sure that his smile was unpleasant this time.
"Is Monsieur only a Sergeant-Major then?" I enquired innocently.
"I am a Sergeant-Major," was the reply, "and let me tell Monsieur, it is the most important rank in the French army."
"No?" said I, and lived to learn that this piece of information was very little short of the simple truth.
"Wait by that door, please," requested the Sergeant-Major, indicating one marked Commandant de Recrutement, and I felt that he had also said, "Wait, just wait, my friend, until you have enlisted."
I waited.
I should think I waited an hour.
Just as I was contemplating another visit to the buttery-hatch or ticket-office window, the door opened and my friend, or enemy, appeared.
"Be pleased to enter, Monsieur," said he suavely, and I, for some reason, or for no reason, bethought me of a poem of childhood's happy days, entitled, "The Spider and the Fly," as I entered a large, bare orderly-room.
But it was no spider that I encountered within, but a courtly and charming gentleman of the finest French type. I know nothing of his history, but I am very sure that he was of those who are "born," as the French say, and that if, in the Terror, his great-grandfather did not perish on the guillotine, it was not because he wasn't an aristocrat.
He was a white-haired, white-moustached, handsome man, dressed in a close-fitting black tunic and baggy red over-alls with a broad black stripe. His cuffs were adorned with bands of gold and of silver braid, and his sleeves with the five galons of a Colonel.
"A recruit for the Legion, mon Commandant," said the Sergeant-Major, and stood stiffly at attention.
The Colonel looked up from the desk at which he was writing, as, entering, I bared my head and bowed; he rose and extended his hand, with a friendly and charming smile.
Not thus, thought I, do British colonels welcome recruits to the ranks of their regiments.
"And you, too, wish to enlist in our Foreign Legion, do you?" he said as we shook hands. "Has England started an export trade in the best of her young men? I don't see many Englishmen here from year's end to year's end, but you, mon enfant, are the third this week!"
My heart gave a bound of hopeful joy. . . .
"Anything like me, sir?" I asked.
"Au bout des ongles," was the reply. "Were they your brothers by any chance? . . . But I will ask no indiscreet questions."
I felt happier than I had done since I had kissed Isobel.
"Yes, mon Commandant," I replied. "I wish to become a soldier of France if you will have me."
"And do you understand what you are doing, Monsieur?" asked the Colonel.
"I have read the placard outside," said I.
"It is not quite all set forth there," he smiled. "The life is a very hard one. I would urge no one to adopt it, unless he were a born soldier and actually desirous of a life of discipline, adventure, and genuine hardship."
No, this certainly was not a case of the spider and the fly--or it was an entirely new one, wherein the spider discouraged flies from entering the web.
"I wish to join, sir," I said. "I have heard something of the life in the Sahara from an officer of Spahis, whom I once knew."
The Colonel smiled again.
"Ah, mon enfant," said he, "but you won't be an officer of Spahis, you see. . . . Nor an officer of the Legion either, except after some very long and lean years in the ranks and as a non-commissioned officer."
"One realises that one must begin at the bottom, mon Commandant," I replied.
"Well--listen then," said the Colonel, and he recited what he evidently knew by heart from frequent repetition.
"The engagement volontaire for La Légion Étrangère is for five years, in Algiers, or any other French colony, and the pay is a sou a day. A légionnaire can re-enlist at the end of the five years, and again at the end of ten years. At the end of fifteen years he is eligible for a pension varying according to his rank. A foreigner, on completion of five years' service, can claim to be naturalised as a French subject. . . . You understand all that, mon enfant?"
"Yes, I thank you, mon Commandant," I replied.
"Mind," continued the Colonel, "I say nothing of what is understood by the term 'service' in the Legion. It is not all pure soldiering at times.
"Nor do I say anything as to the number of men who survive to claim the pension. . . ."
"I am not thinking of the pension, mon Commandant," I replied; "nor of the alleged 'pay,' so much as of a soldier's life, fighting, adventure, experience. . . ."
"Ah, there is plenty of that," said the Colonel. "Plenty of that. It is a real military school and offers the good soldier great and frequent chances of distinction, glory, decoration, and promotion. Some of our most famous generals have been in the Legion, and several of the highest and most distinguished officers of the