Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/231

220 —It was Jean le Nègre, playing a little game with himself to beguile the time.

When we had mounted à la chambre, two or three tried to talk with this extraordinary personage in French; at which he became very superior and announced: "J'suis anglais, moi. Parlez anglais. Comprends pas français, moi." At this a crowd escorted him over to B. and me—anticipating great deeds in the English language. Jean looked at us critically and said: "Vous parlez anglais? Moi parlez anglais."—"We are Americans, and speak English," I answered.—"Moi anglais," Jean said. "Mon père, capitaine de gendarmes, Londres. Comprends pas français, moi. SPEE-Kingliss"—he laughed all over himself.

At this display of English on Jean's part the English-speaking Hollanders began laughing. "The son of a bitch is crazy," one said.

And from that moment B. and I got on famously with Jean.

His mind was a child's. His use of language was sometimes exalted fibbing, sometimes the purely picturesque. He courted above all the sound of words, more or less disdaining their meaning. He told us immediately (in pidgeon French) that he was born without a mother because his mother died when he was born, that his father was (first) sixteen (then) sixty years old, that his father gagnait cinq cent franc par jour (later, par année), that he was born in London and not in England, that he was in the French army and had never been in any army.

He did not, however, contradict himself in one statement: "Les français sont des cochons"—to which we heartily agreed, and which won him the approvel of the Hollanders.

The next day I had my hands full acting as interpreter for "le noir qui comprends pas français." I was summoned from the cour to elucidate a great grief which Jean had been unable to explain to the Gestionnaire. I mounted with a planton to find Jean in hysterics, speechless, his eyes starting out of his