The honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès, however, a half-caste of Spanish or Levantine or French extraction, is anything but fond of the red-trousered foreigner. He despises the Legion and its men from the bottom of his heart and has quite forgotten that the very same Legion built his town for him in the beginning; that there would be no Sidi-bel-Abbès if there had been no Legion.... His woman-kind draw their skirts close about them when they meet a légionnaire in the streets, as if he were plague-stricken. He himself--why, he has managed to bring it about that the officers' mess is now merely used as an evening club, while the officers have to dine in hotels, in order that the honest citizen may make a little money out of them. The sub-lieutenants dine in one hotel, the first lieutenants in another, the unmarried captains and higher officers patronise a third. Every hotel had to have a share in the spoils, of course! The honest citizen is very indignant when the regimental band does not give a concert three times weekly for him; he has his public parks swept by the Legion and takes good care that all the provisions for the three thousand soldiers are bought in the town itself and nowhere else. For the trifling purchases which even a poor devil of a légionnaire sometimes makes he keeps a specially rubbishy class of article and charges double prices for it. The regiment of foreigners is a very good thing for the honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès, but nevertheless he despises the Legion and the légionnaire--this citizen of the Foreign Legion's town. He takes good care, however, not to express his feelings of dislike too openly to Monsieur le Légionnaire, for he has more than once learnt that the men in red trousers are not to be trifled with. That they are much better left alone, in fact. The much-tried patience of the Legion has its strongly defined bounds and sometimes it gives way. When the Legion is not occupied in Tonquin or Madagascar or some such lovely neighbourhood, the regimental band gives a concert several times a week in the Place Sadi Carnot. The good man of Sidi-bel-Abbès always found this concert very fine, but what he did not like about it was that besides himself thousands of légionnaires promenaded in the Carnot square, enjoying the band's music as much as the civilians. One day the honest citizen drew a cordon of police around the Place Sadi Carnot, with orders to let no soldiers pass, and thought he would now have the music all for himself.... The légionnaires were struck dumb with astonishment at this unheard-of impudence and the Arabian policemen felt very uncomfortable. News of the "outrage" was sent to barracks and in a very few minutes the men of the Legion were assembled in full force, discussing in fifteen different languages the evident impossibility of living in peace with the honest citizen of Sidi-bel-Abbès. All at once an old soldier gave the word of command: "En avant par colonne du régiment--marche!"