Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/51



ended by locking up the hermit's garret during the day, and sending him out into the garden to play. The garden itself had been reduced, by one encroachment after the other, to the dimensions of a back-yard. From the windows of the house the eyes of the spy could pry into its furthest corners. And, wearied by her surveillance, the boy made incursions into the workshops.

The fifteen hundred hands in the factory were held in check by rules of a draconian severity. For the least infraction there were penalties, salaries were held up, dismissals accorded against which there was no appeal. A strict justice. No actual iniquity, but the discipline was that of a barracks, the code of penalties was badly proportioned to the offenses, and the balance invariably inclined toward the owners.

Saint-Fardier, a stout man with the head of a comic mask, an olive green skin, thick lipped, with woolly hair like that of a quadroon, scoured the factory upon certain days, leaving behind him a trail of flame and brimstone. He bellowed, rolled his basilisk eyes, shoved his way about, slammed doors, and bounded like a ball of fire from one room to the next. Like a waterspout, he left in his wake despair and desolation.