... O little, very
little, _gouvernement francais_, and you, the great and comfortable
_messieurs_ of the world, tell me why you have put a gypsy who dresses
like To-morrow among the squabbling pimps and thieves of yesterday....
He had been in New York one day.
One child died at sea.
"_Les landes_" he cried, towering over The Enormous Room suddenly one
night in Autumn, "_je les connais commes ma poche_--Bordeaux? _Je sais ou
que c'est._ Madrid? _Je sais ou que c'est._ Tolede? Seville? Naples? _Je
sais ou que c'est. Je les connais comme ma poche._"
He could not read. "Tell me what it tells," he said briefly and without
annoyance, when once I offered him the journal. And I took pleasure in
trying to do so.
One fine day, perhaps the finest day, I looked from a window of The
Enormous Room and saw (in the same spot that Lena had enjoyed her
half-hour promenade during confinement in the _cabinet_, as related) the
wife of The Wanderer, "_nee_ Feliska," giving his baby a bath in a pail,
while The Wanderer sat in the sun smoking. About the pail an absorbed
group of _putains_ stood. Several _plantons_ (abandoning for one instant
their plantonic demeanour) leaned upon their guns and watched. Some even
smiled a little.
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