producing striking effects by means impossible of
detection which is the last word of the highest art.
“Twenty-five minutes—watch in hand—twenty-five,
no more.” . . . He unclasped and clasped
again his fingers without removing his hands from
his stomach, and made it infinitely more effective
than if he had thrown up his arms to heaven in amazement.
.
. . “All that lot (tout ce monde) on
shore—with their little affairs—nobody
left but a guard of seamen (marins de l’Etat)
and that interesting corpse (cet interessant cadavre).
Twenty-five minutes.” . . . With downcast
eyes and his head tilted slightly on one side he seemed
to roll knowingly on his tongue the savour of a smart
bit of work. He persuaded one without any further
demonstration that his approval was eminently worth
having, and resuming his hardly interrupted immobility,
he went on to inform me that, being under orders to
make the best of their way to Toulon, they left in
two hours’ time, “so that (de sorte que)
there are many things in this incident of my life
(dans cet episode de ma vie) which have remained obscure."’
CHAPTER 13
’After these words, and without a change of
attitude, he, so to speak, submitted himself passively
to a state of silence. I kept him company; and
suddenly, but not abruptly, as if the appointed time
had arrived for his moderate and husky voice to come
out of his immobility, he pronounced, “Mon Dieu!
how the time passes!” Nothing could have been
more commonplace than this remark; but its utterance
coincided for me with a moment of vision. It’s
extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half
shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps
it’s just as well; and it may be that it is
this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable
majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless,
there can be but few of us who had never known one
of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear,
understand ever so much—everything—in
a flash—before we fall back again into our
agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes when he
spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him
before. I saw his chin sunk on his breast, the
clumsy folds of his coat, his clasped hands, his motionless
pose, so curiously suggestive of his having been simply
left there. Time had passed indeed: it had
overtaken him and gone ahead. It had left him
hopelessly behind with a few poor gifts: the
iron-grey hair, the heavy fatigue of the tanned face,
two scars, a pair of tarnished shoulder-straps; one
of those steady, reliable men who are the raw material
of great reputations, one of those uncounted lives
that are buried without drums and trumpets under the
foundations of monumental successes. “I
am now third lieutenant of the Victorieuse”
(she was the flagship of the French Pacific squadron
at the time), he said, detaching his shoulders from
the wall a couple of inches to introduce himself.
I bowed slightly on my side of the table, and told
