and inimitable and altogether benignant French Government was not satisfied with its own generosity in presenting one merely with Précigne—beyond that lurked a cauchemar called by the singularly poetic name: Isle de Groix. A man who went to Isle de Groix was done.
As the Surveillant said to us all, leaning out of a littlish window, and to me personally upon occasion—
"You are not prisoners. Oh, no. No indeed, I should say not. Prisoners are not treated like this. You are lucky."
I had de la chance all right, but that was something which the pauvre M. Surveillant wot altogether not of. As for my fellow-prisoners, I am sorry to say that he was—it seems to my humble personality—quite wrong. For who was eligible to La Ferté? Anyone whom the police could find in the lovely country of France (a) who was not guilty—of treason (b) who could not prove that he was not guilty of treason. By treason I refer to any little annoying habits of independent thought or action which en temps de guerre are put in a hole and covered over, with the somewhat naïve idea that from their cadavers violets will grow, whereof the perfume will delight all good men and true and make such worthy citizens forget their sorrows. Fort Leavenworth, for instance, emanates even now a perfume which is utterly delightful to certain Americans. Just how many La Fertés France boasted (and for all I know may still boast) God Himself knows. At least, in that Republic, amnesty has been proclaimed, or so I hear.—But to return to the Surveillants remark.
J'avais de la chance. Because I am by profession a painter and a writer. Whereas my very good friends, all of them deeply suspicious characters, most of them traitors, without exception lucky to have the use of their cervical vertebrae, etc., etc., could (with a few exceptions) write not a word and read not a word; neither could they faire la photographie as Monsieur Auguste chucklingly called it (at which I blushed with pleasure): worst of all, the majority of these dark criminals who had been caught in nefarious plots against the honour of France were totally unable to speak French. Curious
