Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/225

Rh waving his arms; slavering like a mad dog. Then he faced the most prominently vociferous corner and muttered thickly and crazily:

"Wuhwuhwuhwuhwuh...."

Then he strode rapidly to his paillasse and lay down; in which position I caught him, a few minutes later, smiling and even chuckling ... very happy ... as only an actor is happy whose efforts have been greeted with universal applause....

In addition to being called "Syph'lis" he was popularly known as "Chaude Pisse, the Pole." If there is anything particularly terrifying about prisons, or at least imitations of prisons such as La Ferté, it is possibly the utter obviousness with which (quite unknown to themselves) the prisoners demonstrate willy-nilly certain fundamental psychological laws. The case of Surplice is a very exquisite example: everyone, of course, is afraid of les maladies venérinnes—accordingly all pick an individual (of whose inner life they know and desire to know nothing, whose external appearance satisfies the requirements of the mind à propos what is foul and disgusting) and, having tacitly agreed upon this individual as a Symbol of all that is evil, proceed to heap insults upon him and enjoy his very natural discomfiture ... but I shall remember Surplice on his both knees sweeping sacredly together the spilled sawdust from a spittoon-box knocked over by the heel of the omnipotent planton; and smiling as he smiled at la messe when Monsieur le Curé told him that there was always Hell....

He told us one day a great and huge story of an important incident in his life, as follows:

"Monsieur, disabled me—yes, monsieur—disabled—I work, many people, house, very high, third floor, everybody, planks up there—planks no good—all shake..." (here he began to stagger and rotate before us) "begins to fall ... falls, falls, all, all twenty-seven men—bricks—planks—wheelbarrows—all—ten metres ... zuhzuhzuhzuhzuhPOOM!... everybody hurt, everybody killed, not me, injured ... oui monsieur"—and he