Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/246

Rh do nothing. Jean was laughing. His shirt was almost off him. He asked the planton to come and take him, please. He asked the Surveillant, too. The women had set down their pails and were dancing up and down and yelling. The Directeur came down and sent them flying. The Surveillant and his plantons were as helpless as if they had been children. Monsieur Jean—quelque chose."

I gave him another match. "Merci, Monsieur Jean." He struck it, drew on his pipe, lowered it, and went on:

"They were helpless, and men. I am little. I have only one arm, tu sais. I walked up to Jean and said, Jean, you know me, I am your friend. He said, Yes. I said to the plantons, Give me that rope. They gave me the rope that they would have bound him with. He put out his wrists for me. I tied his hands behind his back. He was like a lamb. The plantons rushed up and tied his feet together. Then they tied his hands and feet together. They took the lacings out of his shoes for fear he would use them to strangle himself. They stood him up in an angle between two walls in the cabinot. They left him there for an hour. He was supposed to have been in there all night; but the Surveillant knew that he would have died, for he was almost naked, and vous savez, Monsieur Jean, it was cold in there. And damp. A fully clothed man would have been dead in the morning. And he was naked.... Monsieur Jean—un géant!"

—This same petit belge had frequently protested to me that Il est fou, le noir. He is always playing when sensible men try to sleep. The last few hours (which had made of the fou a géant) made of the scoffer a worshipper. Nor did "le bras cassé" ever from that time forth desert his divinity. If as balayeur he could lay hands on a morceau de pain or de viande, he bore it as before to our beds; but Jean was always called over to partake of the forbidden pleasure.

As for Jean, one would hardly have recognised him. It was as if the child had fled into the deeps of his soul, never to reappear. Day after day went by, and Jean (instead of court-