An Officer And a Spy
“June arrives. The air warms up and very soon Paris starts to reek of shit. The stench rises out of the sewers and settles over the city like a putrid gas. People venture out of doors wearing linen masks or with handkerchiefs pressed to their noses, but it doesn’t make much difference. In the newspapers the experts are unanimous that it isn’t as bad as the original “great stink” of 1880—I can’t speak to that: I was in Algeria at the time—but certainly it ruins the early days of summer. “It is im...possible to stand on one’s balcony,” complains Le Figaro, “impossible to sit on the terrace of one of the busy, joyful cafés that are the pride of our boulevards, without thinking that one must be downwind from some uncouth, invisible giant.” The smell infiltrates one’s hair and clothes and settles in one’s nostrils, even on one’s tongue, so that everything tastes of corruption. Such is the atmosphere on the day I take charge of the Statistical Section.
Major Henry, when he comes to collect me at the Ministry of War, makes light of it: “This is nothing.MoreLess
Major Henry, when he comes to collect me at the Ministry of War, makes light of it: “This is nothing.MoreLess
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