and I were caught by the _planton_ trying to stroll
out into the _cour_ ... every morning he takes the pail of solid
excrement down, without anyone's suggesting that he take it; takes it as
if it were his, empties it in the sewer just beyond the _cour des femmes_
or pours a little (just a little) very delicately on the garden where
Monsieur le Directeur is growing a flower for his daughter--he has, in
fact, an unobstreperous affinity for excrement; he lives in it; he is
shaggy and spotted and blotched with it; he sleeps in it; he puts it in
his pipe and says it is delicious....
And he is intensely religious, religious with a terrible and exceedingly
beautiful and absurd intensity ... every Friday he will be found sitting
on a little kind of stool by his _paillasse_ reading his prayer-book
upside down; turning with enormous delicacy the thin difficult leaves,
smiling to himself as he sees and does not read. Surplice is actually
religious, and so are Garibaldi and I think The Woodchuck (a little dark
sad man who spits blood with regularity); by which I mean they go to _la
messe_ for _la messe_, whereas everyone else goes _pour voir les femmes_.
And I don't know for certain why The Woodchuck goes, but I think it's
because he feels entirely sure he will die.
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