ked for his passport, Terrier
showed it him; the little woman in her corner, veiled and silent, did
not stir, and the gendarme found all in due form. He contented himself
with saying, "We shall travel together, I am on duty as far as the
frontier."

The train, after the ordinary delay of a few minutes, again started. The
night was dark. Terrier had fallen asleep. Suddenly Preveraud felt a
knee press against his, it was the knee of the policeman. A boot placed
itself softly on his foot, it was a horse-soldier's boot. An idyll had
just germinated in the gendarme's soul. He first tenderly pressed
Preveraud's knee, and then emboldened by the darkness of the hour and by
the slumbering husband, he ventured his hand as far as her dress, a
circumstance foreseen by Moliere, but the fair veiled one was virtuous.
Preveraud, full of surprise and rage, gently pushed back the gendarme's
hand. The danger was extreme. Too much love on the part of the gendarme,
one audacious step further, would bring about the unexpected, would
abruptly change the eclogue into an official indictment, would reconvert
the amorous satyr into a stony-hearted policeman, would transform Tircis
into Vidocq; and then this strange thing would be seen, a passenger
guillotined because a gendarme had committed an outrage. The danger
increased every moment. Terrier was sleeping. Suddenly the train
stopped. A voice cried, "Quievrain!" and the door was opened. They were
in Belgium. The gendarme, obliged to stop here, and to re-enter France,
rose to get out, and at the moment when he stepped on to the ground he
heard behind him these expressive words coming from beneath the lace
veil, "Be off, or I'll break your jaw!"

[34] See "Les Hommes de l'Exile."

[35] The name given to a population belonging to the Romanic family, and
more particularly to those of French descent, who occupy the region
along the frontiers of the German-speaking territory in the South
Netherlands from Dunkirk to Malmedy in Rhenish Prussia.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS AND THE MIXED COMMISSIONS

Justice sometime meets with strange adventures.

This old phrase assumed a new sense.

The code ceased to be a safeguard. The law became something which had
sworn fealty to a crime. Louis Bonaparte appointed judges by whom one
felt oneself stopped as in the corner of a wood. In the same manner as
the forest is an accomplice through its density, so the legislation was
an accom