limited acquaintance with the art of burglary. Anyway it was accomplished, and that in several fifths of a second. Now let the curtain fall, and the reader be satisfied with the significant word "Asbestos," which is part of all first-rate performances.
The Surveillant, I fear, distrusted his balayeur. Balayeurs were always being changed because balayeurs were (in shameful contrast to the plantons) invariably human beings. For this deplorable reason they inevitably carried notes to and fro between les hommes and les femmes. Upon which ground the balayeur in this case—a well-knit keen-eyed agile man, with a sense of humour and sharp perception of men, women and things in particular and in general—was called before the bar of an impromptu court, held by M. le Surveillant in The Enormous Room after the promenade. I shall not enter in detail into the nature of the charges pressed in certain cases, but confine myself to quoting the close of a peroration which would have done Demosthenes credit:
"Même le balayeur a tiré un coup!"
The individual in question mildly deprecated M. le Surveillant's opinion, while the audience roared and rocked with laughter of a somewhat ferocious sort. I have rarely seen the Surveillant so pleased with himself as after producing this bon mot. Only fear of his superior, the ogre-like Directeur, kept him from letting off entirely all concerned in what after all (from the European point of view) was an essentially human proceeding. As nobody could prove anything about Même, he was not locked up in a dungeon; but he lost his job of sweeper—which was quite as bad, I am sure, from his point of view—and from that day became a common inhabitant of The Enormous Room like any of the rest of us.
His successor, Garibaldi, was a corker.
How the Almighty French Government in its Almighty Wisdom ever found Garibaldi a place among us is more than I understand or ever will. He was a little tot in a faded blue-grey French uniform; and when he perspired he pushed a kepi up and back from his worried forehead which a lock of heavy
