"My God, if I could only die!--My friends, I've always done my duty here.--I've marched and marched and marched for four long years.--For four years I've borne burdens, exposed to wind and weather, and have tired my strength.--Four long years! Yes, I've lost my tie, oh, la la, a thin blue rag worth a couple of centimes--and was marched off to prison! I'd stolen the tie, I'd sold it--who believes the word of a légionnaire! _Mea culpa_, my friends!" "_Mea maxima culpa!_" repeated the speaker quietly. "'Tis true one has never been much use and has made a monstrous thing of one's life--you and I and all of us! And why not? That's all past and done with now. All the same--I'm ashamed of the country in which the Foreign Legion can exist. I'm a Frenchman. But I say: Damn the Legion, damn the land of the Legion...." And over all there hung the pestilential vapours in the tiny room with the crowded humanity within. When I was relieved at midnight the sergeant asked: "Anything unusual?" "No, nothing special," I answered. CHAPTER XIII SOME TYPES OF VICE A variety of human vices : The red wine of Algeria : Shum-Shum : If there were no wine It was always a marvel to me that neither cards nor dice played the slightest part in the life of the Legion, in sharp contrast with the important part they take in the life of the English Tommy, and especially of the American soldier, who is an incorrigible gambler. On a little station in Texas a detachment of sly old regulars in the course of the single night that they were quartered there cleaned out all the cowboys of the neighbourhood. I was one of the victims. But that's another story.... Anyhow, the Legion is free from the vice of gambling. This is perhaps hardly to be wondered at; five centimes wages. The possibility of winning or losing five centimes is hardly worth a throw of the dice. In its place all the vices of almost every nation in the world can be found in the Foreign Legion. This is not saying too much; I've looked on.