Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/308

 I said to you: 'Relatives, it is necessary always to keep them at a distance. They push themselves forward, and sometimes, to excuse them one is led to commit whole heaps of lowness.'"

"In truth," said Jean, "I would never have had to complain of him. On the contrary, he wore his heart on his sleeve."

"Oh, all drunkards are like that. One says: 'They wear their hearts on their sleeve,' and one does not count all the times when they lead the others away."

"Ah, I have understood many things, father. How can I explain everything that I have understood! There are moments still when, to see and to realize—that makes in my head a noise as if the world would not stay in place. I tell you again it was François who made me understand. I saw, in the evenings. I would say to him: 'I am bored, I haven't even a comrade, and I eat at hotel-*tables a dinner too well served.' He said: 'Come to my house. You don't know what it is to eat good things, because you don't work, and because hunger makes a part of work. You will have some soup with us, and we will tell you at least that you are happy to be where you are, and to look upon the workingman while playing the amateur.' I said to him: 'But I work, also. To see, to understand, to analyze, to be an engineer! You, it's your arms; me, it's my head and my heart that ache.' He laughed: 'Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! When I come home in the evening with my throat dry and I eat my soup, I also have a headache, and I laugh at you with your heart-ache. I am as tired as a wolf. What's that you call your heart?'"

"Yes, he was right there," said Pierre Bousset. "For my part, I don't understand at all how you are going