--Everyone gathered about me. "What news?"
"I have asked to go to Oloron as a suspect," I answered.
"You should have taken my advice and asked to go to Cannes," the fat
Alsatian reproached me. He had indeed spent a great while advising me;
but I trusted the little Machine-Fixer.
"_Parti?_" Jean le Negre said with huge eyes, touching me gently.
"No, no. Later, perhaps; not now," I assured him. And he patted my
shoulder and smiled, "_Bon!_" And we smoked a cigarette in honour of the
snow, of which Jean--in contrast to the majority of _les hommes_--highly
and unutterably approved. "_C'est jolie!_" he would say, laughing
wonderfully. And next morning he and I went on an exclusive promenade, I
in my _sabots_, Jean in a new pair of slippers which he had received
(after many requests) from the _bureau_. And we strode to and fro in the
muddy _cour_ admiring _la neige_, not speaking.
One day, after the snowfall, I received from Paris a complete set of
Shakespeare in the Everyman edition. I had forgotten completely that B.
and I--after trying and failing to get William Blake--had ordered and
paid for the better-known William; the ordering and communicating in
general being done with the collaboration of Monsieur Pet-airs.
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