Such disorderly scenes occurred at this women's club, that the landlord of
the Triat Gymnasium at last took possession of the premises again, and the
ejected members vainly endeavoured to find accommodation elsewhere.
Nevertheless, another scheme for organizing an armed force of women was
started, and one day, on observing on the walls of Paris a green placard
which announced the formation of a "Legion of Amazons of the Seine," I
repaired to the Rue Turbigo, where this Legion's enlistment office had
been opened. After making my way up a staircase crowded with recruits, who
were mostly muscular women from five-and-twenty to forty years of age, the
older ones sometimes being unduly stout, and not one of them, in my
youthful opinion, at all good-looking, I managed to squeeze my way into
the private office of the projector of the Legion, or, as he called
himself, its "Provisional Chef de Bataillon." He was a wiry little man,
with a grey moustache and a military bearing, and answered to the name of
Felix Belly. A year or two previously he had unjustly incurred a great
deal of ridicule in Paris, owing to his attempts to float a Panama Canal
scheme.
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