Page:The Enormous Room.pdf/274

Rh to the majority of les hommes—highly and unutterably approved. "C'est jolie!" he would say, laughing wonderfully. And next morning he and I went on an exclusive promenade, I in my sabots, Jean in a new pair of slippers which he had received (after many requests) from the bureau. And we strode to and fro in the muddy cour admiring la neige, not speaking.

One day, after the snowfall, I received from Paris a complete set of Shakespeare in the Everyman edition. I had forgotten completely that B. and I—after trying and failing to get William Blake—had ordered and paid for the better-known William; the ordering and communicating in general being done with the collaboration of Monsieur Pet-airs. It was a curious and interesting feeling which I experienced upon first opening to "As You Like It" ... the volumes had been carefully inspected, I learned, by the sécrétaire, in order to eliminate the possibility of their concealing something valuable or dangerous. And in this connection let me add that the sécrétaire or (if not he) his superiors, were a good judge of what is valuable—if not what is dangerous. I know this because, whereas my family several times sent me socks in every case enclosing cigarettes, I received invariably the former sans the latter. Perhaps it is not fair to suspect the officials of La Ferté of this peculiarly mean theft; I should, possibly, doubt the honesty of that very same French censor whose intercepting of B.'s correspondence had motivated our removal from the Section Sanitaire. Heaven knows I wish (like the Three Wise Men) to give justice where justice is due.

Somehow or other, reading Shakespeare did not appeal to my disordered mind. I tried Hamlet and Julius Caesar once or twice, and gave it up, after telling a man who asked "Shah-kay-spare, who is Shah-kay-spare?" that Mr. S. was the Homer of the English-speaking peoples--which remark, to my surprise, appeared to convey a very definite idea to the questioner and sent him away perfectly satisfied. Most of the timeless time I spent promenading in the rain and sleet with Jean le Nègre, or talking with Mexique, or exchanging big