Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/294

266 that ships given up as lost had returned to the port where they were being mourned!

Laurent broke through the mob of dockers, sailors and tearful women whom a common grief had brought together, a mob made even more tragic by the presence of many wretched looking families of emigrants, designated for the next sailing, perhaps marked for the next wreck! Lamentations and sobs arose at intervals above the black and suffocating silence.

Laurent succeeded in worming himself through the crowd as far as the counter in the office.

"Is it true, Monsieur, what they are saying in the city?…"

He stammered each word and affected a doubtful intonation.

"Oh, yes!… How many times do I have to repeat it to you? Long enough to die of hunger, at least!… Get out, now, and leave us some peace, and be hanged to you!"

At these abominable words that only a Saint-Fardier could be capable of pronouncing, Paridael hurled himself against the partition between himself and the inner offices.

The door burst inward.

Laurent followed it and struck the individual who had just spoken to him, and who was none other than the former partner of Cousin William, full in the face, with the fury of a mad bull.

The Pasha had always had the soul of a convict-warden or a slave-driver, and the ex-slave-dealer Béjard had found in him the implacable brute whom he required to plan and expedite his traffic in souls.

Had it not been for the intervention of his clerks, who tore him away from his aggressor, the miserable