By way of contrast to the business of it all is the light-blue Gendarme, unaffected by the entourage of war, ambling peacefully where he will, greeting all and sundry with an expansive smile and growing momentarily ruddier and more fat in his happy face. It is his work in life to get in nobody's way and do no man any harm; it is his pleasure to wear upon his head a helmet of the truest steel, of a type created to ward off hostile shrapnel, but worn by him for the same good reason for which a miller wears a white hat. I count amongst the best of my newly-found friends a certain _chef_ of this merry and bright _escadron_. An ex-Cavalry Officer, he fought through the earlier stages of the War, undaunted by many misadventures. Since he took to the less hazardous pastime of commanding _gendarmerie_, he has found life not so precarious, may be, but a good deal more intricate.
He will tell you, if you ask him, the story of the sacred civilian automobile which he once ventured to stop in order to satisfy himself as to its contents. He did not recognise any significant halo surrounding it, though this should have been discernible even in the cloud of dust accompanying it. He had his written instructions to see that the credentials of all who drove through his zone should be _en règle_. Simple and ingenuous as he then was, written instructions were enough for him. The car approached him menacingly, but he stood his horse in the middle of the road and signed to it to stop. The car hooted with hoarse and defiant anger, and a sinister bowler hat was seen and angry words were heard at the window. None the less he stopped it at the risk of his life, and in his best manner (always a nice one) demanded credentials.
In wartime, one may interfere with Jupiter and be forgiven, but my Commandant had gone too far. He was lucky to find himself, at the conclusion of the correspondence, severely admonished and in receipt of an order to place himself under arrest for six days (which he did, choosing six wet ones).
The Commandant clings to the childlike belief that we manage these things better in England. What would have happened, he asked me, if he had been a British officer and the object of his attention merely a Member of Parliament? "Merely," indeed! I answered that the thing simply couldn't be conceived as happening with us. Our soldiers, I admitted, were amongst the bravest of the brave, but I had never yet met one reckless enough to dream of obstructing the slightest whim of a politician.