six inches from my nose. I took the cheese from the hand, which departed as
if by magic; and a little later had the pleasure of being joined at my
window by The Zulu, who was brushing cheese crumbs from his long slender
Mandarin mustaches, and who expressed profound astonishment and equally
profound satisfaction upon noting that I too had been enjoying the
pleasures of cheese. Not once, but several times, this Excalibur
appearance startled B. and me: in fact the extreme modesty and
incomparable shyness of The Zulu found only in this procedure a
satisfactory method of bestowing presents upon his two friends ... I
would I could see that long hand once more, the sensitive fingers poised
upon a half-camembert; the bodiless arm swinging gently and surely with a
derrick-like grace and certainty in my direction....
Not very long after The Zulu's arrival occurred an incident which I give with pleasure because it shows the dauntless and indomitable, not to say intrepid, stuff of which plantons are made. The single sceau which supplied the (at this time) sixty-odd inhabitants of The Enormous Room with drinking water had done its duty, shortly after our arrival from the first soupe with such thoroughness as to leave a number of unfortunate (among whom I was one) waterless. The interval between soupe and promenade loomed darkly and thirstily before us unfortunates. As the minutes passed, it loomed with greater and greater distinctness. At the end of twenty minutes our thirst—stimulated by an especially salty dose of lukewarm water for lunch—attained truly desperate proportions. Several of the bolder thirsters leaned from the various windows of the room and cried
"De l'eau, planton; de l'eau, s'il vous plaît"
upon which the guardian of the law looked up suspiciously; pausing a moment as if to identify the scoundrels whose temerity had so far got the better of their understanding as to lead them to address him, a planton, in familiar terms—and then grimly resumed his walk, gun on shoulder, revolver on hip, the picture of simple and unaffected majesty. Whereat, seeing that entreaties were of no avail, we put our seditious and dangerous
