“I don’t give a damn about your cane,” burbled my new captor frothily,
his pink evil eyes swelling with wrath.
“I’m staying,” I replied calmly, and sat down on a curb, in the midst
of my ponderous trinkets.
A crowd of _gendarmes_ gathered. One didn’t take a cane with one to
prison (I was glad to know where I was bound, and thanked this
communicative gentleman); or criminals weren’t allowed canes; or where
exactly did I think I was, in the Tuileries? asks a rube movie-cop
personage.
“Very well, gentlemen,” I said. “You will allow me to tell you
something.” (I was beet-colored.) “In America that sort of thing isn’t
done.”
This haughty inaccuracy produced an astonishing effect, namely, the
prestidigitatorial vanishment of the v-f-g. The v-f-g’s numerous
_confrères_ looked scared and twirled their whiskers.
I sat on the curb and began to fill a paper with something which I
found in my pockets, certainly not tobacco.
Splutter-splutter-fizz-Poop—the v-f-g is back, with my oak-branch in
his raised hand, slithering opprobria and mostly crying: “Is that huge
piece of wood what you call a cane? It is, is it? What? How? What
the—,” so on.
I beamed upon him and thanked him, and explained that a “dirty
Frenchman” had given it to me as a souvenir, and that I would now
proceed.
Twisting the handle in the loop of my sack, and hoisting the vast
parcel under my arm, I essayed twice to boost it on my back. This to
the accompaniment of HurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurryHurry…. The third
time I sweated and staggered to my feet, completely accoutred.
Down the road. Into the _ville_. Curious looks from a few pedestrians.
A driver stops his wagon to watch the spider and his outlandish fly. I
chuckled to think how long since I had washed and shaved. Then I nearly
fell, staggered on a few steps, and set down the two loads.
Perhaps it was the fault of a strictly vegetarian diet. At any rate, I
couldn’t move a step farther with my bundles. The sun sent the sweat
along my nose in tickling waves. My eyes were blind.
Hereupon I suggested that the v-f-g carry part of one of my bundles
with me, and received the answer: “I am doing too much for you as it
is. No _gendarme_ is supposed to carry a prisoner’s baggage.”