Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/190

Rh if you like, you understand what I'm saying? But some time when you have nothing" (extraordinary gently) "what then? Better to save for that day ... better to buy du tabac and faire yourself; these are made of tobacco dust."

And there was someone to the right who was saying: "To-morrow is Sunday" ... wearily. The King, lying upon his huge quilt, sobbing now only a little, heard:

"So—ah—he was born on a Sunday—my wife is nursing him, she gives him the breast" (the gesture charmed) "she said to them she would not eat if they gave her that—that's not worth anything—meat is necessary every day ..." he mused. I tried to go.

"Sit there" (graciousness of complete gesture. The sheer kingliness of poverty. He creased the indescribably soft couverture for me and I sat and looked into his forehead bounded by the cube of square sliced hair. Blacker than Africa. Than imagination).

After this evening I felt that possibly I knew a little of The Wanderer, or he of me.

The Wanderer's wife and his two daughters and his baby lived in the women's quarters. I have not described and cannot describe these four. The little son of whom he was tremendously proud slept with his father in the great quilts in The Enormous Room. Of The Wanderer's little son I may say that he had lolling buttons of eyes sewed on gold flesh, that he had a habit of turning cart-wheels in one-third of his father's trousers, that we called him The Imp. He ran, he teased, he turned handsprings, he got in the way, and he even climbed the largest of the scraggly trees in the cour one day. "You will fall," Monsieur Peters (whose old eyes had a fondness for this irrepressible creature) remarked with conviction.—"Let him climb," his father said quietly. "I have climbed trees. I have fallen out of trees. I am alive." The Imp shinnied like a monkey, shouting and crowing, up a lean gnarled limb—to the amazement of the very planton who later tried to rape Celina and was caught. This planton put his gun in readiness and assumed an eager attitude of immutable