Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/297

Rh the crowd than questioned him about the affair, ran bareheaded—he had forgotten to pick up his cap after the flight—without seeing or hearing anything, to his garret, and, tumbling upon his bed as he used to do at the Dobouziez's, shed the tears that his fury had driven back into his bosom. He paused in his crying only to repeat these names: "Jean!… Vincent!… Siska!… Henriette!… Pierket!…"

Afterward, no day went by that did not find him murderously humming to himself, as though inoculating himself with a sweet, but very powerful poison, the "Où peut-on être mieux?" of the Willeghem band.

Without suspecting the transformation that his haughty cousin was undergoing, Laurent henceforth confused the two Ginas, the woman and the boat; it was Madame Béjard who, in order to kill his good and sainted Henriette, had dedicated the ship, her godson, to shipwreck. And to think that he had for one moment been in love with that Regina, on the night of Béjard's election! At present, he flattered himself that he would always curse her!

His devotion to the dear dead soon became confused, in his hatred of the oligarchic society, not only with his love for the simple working-people, but with an extreme sympathy for the poorest and the most disgraced, even for those wretches who had fallen to the very dregs of society. Finally he gave himself up to that need for anarchy which had fermented within him since his earliest infancy, which rent his heart and entered into his deepest spirit.

It was toward the condemned of earth that his vast desire for communion and tenderness oriented itself.