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PARTISAN REVIEW
behind the saddle, the flask, all the paraphernalia. Suddenly, around
the bend in a road, what do I see? Antoinette! In a ray of sunlight,
she was white and all alone, like an apparition. She told me later
that she was scared, a young girl isolated like that and faced with a
whole regiment of men on horseback walking toward her, who were
certainly going to smile, and snicker, and crack jokes when they saw
her! But she wanted to be brave. She summoned up all her energy
and walked on, turning her eyes away from the soldiers. And then,
bingo! The dirty tricks fate plays! The troop was just beginning to
pass her when she heard a faint popping sound coming from her
clothes. Next she felt an abnormal freedom around her waist, and
then immediately something light falling down onto her feet . She
had just lost her panties! She stopped, paralyzed, her head swim–
ming, and she kept saying to herself, I'm going to faint, I'm going to
faint , I'm going to faint, I'm going to fall down onto the ground with
my skirt hitched up, the soldiers will come flocking around me, how
awful, how awful! And then she noticed a certain confusion among
the cavalrymen. One of them had somersaulted over his horse's neck
and fallen onto the ground. The other horses stopped or stepped
aside, so as not to trample him .
It
was me! I was the only one to have
seen Antoinette's little panties landing on her shoes, and it had taken
my breath away, it had made my heart stop, and I had passed out!
It
was a bit like the day of the glove, but a hundred times, a thousand
times more potent. Antoinette took advantage of it to step out of her
panties and stuff them in her bag. She was all set to scoot without
waiting for any more when she recognized me.
It
was her little
neighbor lying there on the cobblestones! Some of the men had dis–
mounted, they had slid a greatcoat under the back of my neck, and
they were trying to make me drink from a flask. The liquid ran down
over my chin . Then Antoinette took pity on me . Instead of making
her escape she came up, knelt down by my side , and wiped my face
with her handkerchief.. .. Well, with what she thought was her
handkerchief! Because, after they'd taken me to the infirmary in the
barracks, what did I find around my neck? Her little panties! Com–
pletely soaked in alcohol! I was drunk, yes, but it wasn't the smell of
the alcohol that was intoxicating me! It became my fetish, that little
pair of panties . Three weeks later the war came, the phony war at
first, and then a war that was a lot less phony and a lot less funny.
Especially for the cavalry. The cavalryman is an anachronism when
he's faced with German armored divisions. Panache-oh yes, we
had plenty of panache! One day we were on the top of a hill. And
