Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/165

154 —a diminutive man with immense mustachios of his own who promenaded with Monsieur Auguste, speaking sometimes French but, as a general rule, Russian or Polish.

Which was my first glimpse, and is the reader's, of the Zulu; he being one of the Delectable Mountains. For which reason I shall have more to say of him later, when I ascend the Delectable Mountains in a separate chapter or chapters; till when the reader must be content with the above, however unsatisfactory description....

One of the most utterly repulsive personages whom I have met in my life—perhaps (and on second thought I think certainly) the most utterly repulsive—was shortly after this presented to our midst by the considerate French government. I refer to The Fighting Sheeney. Whether or no he arrived after the Spanish Whoremaster I cannot say. I remember that Bill the Hollander—which was the name of the triangular rope-belted man with shifty blue eyes (co-arrivé with the whiskey Belgian; which Belgian, by the way, from his not to be exaggerated brutal look, B. and myself called The Baby-snatcher)—upon his arrival told great tales of a Spanish millionaire with whom he had been in prison just previous to his discovery of La Ferté. "He'll be here too in a couple o' days," added Bill the Hollander, who had been fourteen years in These United States, spoke the language to a T, talked about "The America Lakes," and was otherwise amazingly well acquainted with The Land of The Free. And sure enough, in less than a week one of the fattest men whom I have ever laid eyes on, over-dressed, much beringed and otherwise wealthy-looking, arrived—and was immediately played up to by Judas (who could smell cash almost as far as le gouvernement français could smell sedition) and, to my somewhat surprise, by the utterly respectable Count Bragard. But most emphatically NOT by Mexique, who spent a half-hour talking to the nouveau in his own tongue, then drifted placidly over to our beds and informed us:

"You see dat feller over dere, dat fat feller? I speak Spanish to him. He no good. Tell me he make fifty thousand franc