"Go back to your room," he said, laughing, "and ask your Corporal why I won't let you go out." Disconsolately I trudged back to the room. There I was greeted with a roar of laughter from all the troopers. "So," they exclaimed, "the Sergeant has sent you back?" "Yes, but why?" All the men shouted with laughter. I confess that I felt rather foolish. "Come here, you recruit," good-naturedly said one of them at last, "let me brush you." And so saying he vigorously applied a brush to my back. It appears that before I went out one of the troopers had drawn a huge chalk cross on my tunic. I then learnt that before leaving barracks, every trooper must present himself before the Sergeant of the Guard, who has to examine him, and see that he is properly groomed; if anything is amiss in his uniform the Sergeant sends him back to put himself straight. This, I may add, often leads to considerable abuse of their power by certain Sergeants, for when one of them has a grudge against a man he will send him back five or six times to his room without telling him what he considers wrong in his attire--the regulations in no way compelling the Sergeant to explain to the trooper where he considers that the fault lies. I have seen a trooper sent back in this way to his room no less than eight times running. It was a pouring wet day, and when for the ninth time the Sergeant ordered him to return the trooper implored him to tell him what was wrong. "You dirty pig," replied the Sergeant, "look at your boots, they are covered with mud." The trooper, it must be mentioned, had to walk over a hundred yards from his room across the courtyard before reaching the gate, and irritated beyond measure by the injustice of the Sergeant, he asked, in a sarcastic tone, whether he was expected to carry an umbrella. "If you like," added the man, "I'll go and fetch my brushes and brush my boots here, and then perhaps you will be satisfied?" For that answer the Sergeant gave the man four days' _Salle de Police_, stating in his report as a reason for that punishment that "the trooper, after presenting himself nine times before the Sergeant of the Guard in a disgraceful state of filth, had grossly insulted the Sergeant who had remonstrated with him." The trooper had often been punished before, and held a bad record, so, upon reading the Sergeant's report, the Colonel altered the punishment into thirty days' prison. But to return to myself. When I appeared once more before the Sergeant of the Guard, that non-commissioned officer, who was not a bad fellow after all, laughed at the trick that had been played on me and allowed me to go out.