Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/196

Rh great letters to the civil and I guess military authorities of Orne on the subject of the injustice done to the father of four children, one a baby at the breast, now about to be separated from all he held dear and good in this world. "I appeal" (Monsieur Pet-airs wrote in his boisterously careful, not to say elegant, script) "to your sense of mercy and of fair play and of honour. It is not merely an unjust thing which is being done, not merely an unreasonable thing, it is an unnatural thing...." As he wrote I found it hard to believe that this was the aged and decrepit and fussing biped whom I had known, whom I had caricatured, with whom I had talked upon ponderous subjects (a comparison between the Belgian and French cities with respect to their location as favouring progress and prosperity, for example); who had with a certain comic shyness revealed to me a secret scheme for reclaiming inundated territories by means of an extraordinary pump "of my invention." Yet this was he, this was Monsieur Pet-airs Lui-Même; and I enjoyed peculiarly making his complete acquaintance for the first and only time.

May the Heavens prosper him!

The next day The Wanderer appeared in the cour walking proudly in a shirt of solid vermilion.

He kissed his wife—excuse me, Monsieur Malvy, I should say the mother of his children—crying very bitterly and suddenly.

The plantons yelled for him to line up with the rest, who were waiting outside the gate, bag and baggage. He covered his great king's eyes with his long golden hands and went.

With him disappeared unspeakable sunlight, and the dark keen bright strength of the earth.