"I appeal" (Monsieur Pet-airs wrote in his boisterously careful, not to
say elegant, script) "to your sense of mercy and of fair play and of
honour. It is not merely an unjust thing which is being done, not merely
an unreasonable thing, it is an unnatural thing...." As he wrote I found
it hard to believe that this was the aged and decrepit and fussing biped
whom I had known, whom I had caricatured, with whom I had talked upon
ponderous subjects (a comparison between the Belgian and French cities
with respect to their location as favouring progress and prosperity, for
example); who had with a certain comic shyness revealed to me a secret
scheme for reclaiming inundated territories by means of an extraordinary
pump "of my invention." Yet this was he, this was Monsieur Pet-airs
Lui-Meme; and I enjoyed peculiarly making his complete acquaintance for
the first and only time.
May the Heavens prosper him!
The next day The Wanderer appeared in the _cour_ walking proudly in a
shirt of solid vermilion.
He kissed his wife--excuse me, Monsieur Malvy, I should say the mother of
his children--crying very bitterly and suddenly.
The _plantons_ yelled for him to line up with the rest, who were waiting
outside the gate, bag and baggage.
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