y and stew every Sunday it was the most
we had to expect. Ask Cabassu whether it was not so. He knew me in those
days. He can tell you whether I am not speaking the truth. Oh, yes, I
have known what poverty is." He threw back his head with an impulse
of pride as he savoured the odour of truffles diffused through the
suffocating atmosphere. "I have known it, and the real thing too, and
for a long time. I have been cold. I have known hunger--genuine hunger,
remember--the hunger that intoxicates, that wrings the stomach, sets
circles dancing in your head, deprives you of sight as if the inside of
your eyes was being gouged out with an oyster-knife. I have passed days
in bed for want of an overcoat to go out in; fortunate at that when
I had a bed, which was not always. I have sought my bread from every
trade, and that bread cost me such bitter toil, it was so black, so
tough, that in my mouth I keep still the flavour of its acrid and mouldy
taste. And thus until I was thirty. Yes, my friends, at thirty years
of age--and I am not yet fifty--I was still a beggar, without a sou,
without a future, with the remorseful thought of the poor old mother,
become a widow, who was half-dying of hunger away yonder in her booth,
and to whom I had nothing to give."

Around this Amphitryon recounting the story of his evil days the faces
of his hearers expressed curiosity. Some appeared shocked, Monpavon
especially. For him, this exposure of rags was in execrable taste, an
absolute breach of good manners. Cardailhac, sceptical and dainty, an
enemy to scenes of emotion, with face set as if it were hypnotized,
sliced a fruit on the end of his fork into wafers as thin as cigarette
papers.

The governor exhibited, on the contrary, a flatly admiring demeanour,
uttering exclamations of amazement and compassion; while, not far away,
in singular contrast, Brahmin Bey, the thunderbolt of war, upon whom
this reading followed by a lecture after a heavy meal had had the effect
of inducing a restorative slumber, slept with his mouth open beneath his
white moustache, his face congested by his collar, which had slipped
up. But the most general expression was one of indifference and boredom.
What could it matter to them, I ask you; what had they to do with
Jansoulet's childhood in the Bourg-Saint-Andeol, the trials he had
endured, the way in which he had trudged his path? They had not come to
listen to idle nonsense of that kind. Airs of interest falsely a