When it happened that the distances between the bowls
and the cochonnet had to be measured, the cane
of this silent being was used as a measure, the players
coming up and taking it from the icy hands of the
old man and returning it without a word or even a sign
of friendliness. The loan of his cane seemed
a servitude to which he had negatively consented.
When a shower fell, he stayed near the cochonnet,
the slave of the bowls, and the guardian of the unfinished
game. Rain affected him no more than the fine
weather did; he was, like the players themselves,
an intermediary species between a Parisian who has
the lowest intellect of his kind and an animal which
has the highest.
In other respects, pallid and shrunken, indifferent
to his own person, vacant in mind, he often came bareheaded,
showing his sparse white hair, and his square, yellow,
bald skull, like the knee of a beggar seen through
his tattered trousers. His mouth was half-open,
no ideas were in his glance, no precise object appeared
in his movements; he never smiled; he never raised
his eyes to heaven, but kept them habitually on the
ground, where he seemed to be looking for something.
At four o’clock an old woman arrived, to take
him Heaven knows where; which she did by towing him
along by the arm, as a young girl drags a wilful goat
which still wants to browse by the wayside. This
old man was a horrible thing to see.
In the afternoon of the day when Jules Desmarets left
Paris, his travelling-carriage, in which he was alone,
passed rapidly through the rue de l’Est, and
came out upon the esplanade of the Observatoire at
the moment when the old man, leaning against a tree,
had allowed his cane to be taken from his hand amid
the noisy vociferations of the players, pacifically
irritated. Jules, thinking that he recognized
that face, felt an impulse to stop, and at the same
instant the carriage came to a standstill; for the
postilion, hemmed in by some handcarts, had too much
respect for the game to call upon the players to make
way for him.
“It is he!” said Jules, beholding in that
human wreck, Ferragus XXIII., chief of the Devorants.
Then, after a pause, he added, “How he loved
her!—Go on, postilion.”
ADDENDUM
Note: Ferragus is the first part
of a trilogy. Part two is entitled The Duchesse
de Langeais and part three is The Girl with the
Golden Eyes. In other addendum references all
three stories are usually combined under the title
The Thirteen.
The following personages appear in other stories of
the Human Comedy.
Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Desmartes, Jules
Cesar Birotteau
Desmartes, Madame Jules
Cesar Birotteau
Desplein
The Atheist’s Mass
Cousin Pons
Lost Illusions
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Bachelor’s Establishment
The Seamy Side of History
Modeste Mignon
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Honorine
Copyrights
The Thirteen from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
