No, it is not I who am saying good-bye. It is in fact somebody
else, possibly myself. Perhaps myself has shaken hands with a little
creature with a wizened arm, a little creature in whose eyes tears for
some reason are; with a placid youth (Mexique?) who smiles and says
shakily:
"Good-bye, Johnny; I no for-get you,"
with a crazy old fellow who somehow or other has got inside B.'s tunic
and is gesticulating and crying out and laughing; with a frank-eyed boy
who claps me on the back and says:
"Good-bye and good luck t'you"
(is he The Young Skipper, by any chance?); with a lot of hungry wretched
beautiful people--I have given my bed to The Zulu, by Jove! and The Zulu
is even now standing guard over it, and his friend The Young Pole has
given me the address of "_mon ami_," and there are tears in The Young
Pole's eyes, and I seem to be amazingly tall and altogether tearless--and
this is the nice Norwegian, who got drunk at Bordeaux and stole three (or
four was it?) cans of sardines ... and now I feel before me someone who
also has tears in his eyes, someone who is in fact crying, someone whom I
feel to be very strong and young as he hugs me quietly in his firm, alert
arms, kissing me on both cheeks and on the lips.
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