The face
consisted of a rapid nose, droopy moustache, ferocious watery small eyes,
a pugnacious chin, and sunken cheeks hideously smiling. There was
something in the ensemble at once brutal and ridiculous, vigorous and
pathetic.
Again I had not time to speak; for the hooligan in azure trousers hurled
his butt at the bear's feet, exclaiming: "There's another for you,
Polak!"--jumped from the bed, seized the broom, and poured upon the
vulture a torrent of _Gott-ver-dummers_, to which the latter replied
copiously and in kind. Then the red face bent within a few inches of my
own, and for the first time I saw that it had recently been young--"I say
I do your sweep for you" it translated pleasantly. I thanked it; and the
vulture, exclaiming: "Good. Good. Not me. _Surveillant._ Harree does it
for everybody. Hee, hee"--rushed off, followed by Harree and the tassel.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched the tall, ludicrous, extraordinary,
almost proud figure of the bear stoop with quiet dignity, the musical
fingers close with a singular delicacy upon the moist indescribable
eighth-of-an-inch of tobacco.
I did not know that this was a Delectable Mountain....
The clean-shaven man (who appeared to have been completely won over by
his smoke), and the fluffy gnome, who had completed the arrangement of my
_paillasse_, now entered into conversation with myself and B.
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