... In the kitchen worked a very remarkable person. Who wore _sabots_.
And sang continuously in a very subdued way to himself as he stirred the
huge black kettles. We, that is to say, B. and I, became acquainted with
Afrique very gradually. You did not know Afrique suddenly. You became
cognisant of Afrique gradually. You were in the _cour_, staring at ooze
and dead trees, when a figure came striding from the kitchen lifting its
big wooden feet after it rhythmically, unwinding a particoloured scarf
from its waist as it came, and singing to itself in a subdued manner a
jocular, and I fear, unprintable ditty concerning Paradise. The figure
entered the little gate to the _cour_ in a business-like way, unwinding
continuously, and made stridingly for the cabinet situated up against the
stone wall which separated the promenading sexes--dragging behind it on
the ground a tail of ever-increasing dimensions. The cabinet reached,
tail and figure parted company; the former fell inert to the limitless
mud, the latter disappeared into the contrivance with a Jack-in-the-box
rapidity. From which contrivance the continuing ditty
"_le 'paradis est une maison...._"
--Or again, it's a lithe pausing poise, intensely intelligent, certainly
sensitive, delivering dryingly a series of sure and rapid hints that
penetrate the fabric of stupidity accurately and whisperingly; dealing
one after another brief and poignant instupidities, distinct and
uncompromising, crisp and altogether arrowlike.
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