Finally she had been admitted
pending judgment. _Also sprach_, highly excited, the _balayeur_.
"Looks like a--hoor," was the Belgian-Dutch verdict, a verdict which was
obviously due to the costume of the lady in question almost as much as to
the untemperamental natures sojourning at La Ferte. B. and I agreed that
she and her children were the most beautiful people we had ever seen, or
would ever be likely to see. So _la soupe_ ended, and everybody belched
and gasped and trumpeted up to The Enormous Room as usual.
That evening, about six o'clock, I heard a man crying as if his heart
were broken. I crossed The Enormous Room. Half-lying on his _paillasse_,
his great beard pouring upon his breast, his face lowered, his entire
body shuddering with sobs, lay The Wanderer. Several of the men were
about him, standing in attitudes ranging from semi-amusement to stupid
sympathy, listening to the anguish which--as from time to time he lifted
his majestic head--poured slowly and brokenly from his lips. I sat down
beside him. And he told me: "I bought him for six hundred francs, and I
sold him for four hundred and fifty ... it was not a horse of this race,
but of the race" (I could not catch the word) "as long as from here to
that post.
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