It's a small plaque riveted at the corner of a street. A marble rectangle that you no longer notice. "In memory of Miquette, the grateful former sailors." No date, no place, no feats of arms. They date us at the adjoining bar: Miquette was a girl of joy. Chicago's most famous. Specialized in the deflowering of "arpetes". Arpètes, in military jargon, designate the apprentice mechanics of the Fleet. In the past, they could join from 14 or 15 years old. More milk behind the ears and already a bachi stuck on it. Miquette had set out to make men of them. Difficult to estimate the number of boys that she will have inaugurated in thirty years of career. Probably hundreds. Maybe a thousand.
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Next to the plaque in honor of Miquette could have been affixed another: “Here was born, lived, died little Chicago. 1945-1985. " For forty years, the heart of Toulon beat to the rhythm of the waves of sailors who disembarked by crews at the Arsenal,
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