THE PORT .RAIT GALLERY
221
and Parrottin went still further, so far that the young man had
difficulty in following him. After several interviews of this sort one
could observe a considerable improvement in the young rebel. H e:
looked clearly at himself, he: learned to recognize the deep ties which
attached him to his family and his environment; and, finally, he
understood the admirable role of the elite. In the end, as if under a
spell, the stray sheep who had followed Parrottin step by step, found
his way back to the sheepfold, enlightened and repentant. "He has
cured more souls," concluded Wakefield, "than I bodies."
Remy Parrottin smiled at me affably. He hesitated, he was trying
to understand my position, in order to turn me gently and lead me
into the fold. But I was not afraid of him: I was no sheep. I looked
at
his
fine forehead, calm and unwrinkled,
his
little paunch, the hand
spread out flat upon his knee. I returned his smile and left him.
Jean Parrottin, his brother, president of the S.A.B., leaned with
both hands on the edge of a table loaded with papers; in every way
his attitude indicated to the visitor that the interview had come to
an end. His gaze was extraordinary; it was almost an abstraction,
shining with pure authority. His burning eyes devoured his whole
face. Beneath this conflagration I perceived the thin, tightly pressed
lips of the mystic. "It's funny," I thought, "he looks like Remy Par–
rottin." I turned towards the Great Master; an examination in the
light of this resemblance unexpectedly brought out in
his
gentle
features a suggestion of aridity and desolation, the family look. I
turned back to Jean Parrottin.
This man had the simplicity of a single idea. There was no more
to him than a few bones, some dead flesh, and Pure Right. A true
case of possession, I thought. When Right gets hold of a man, no
amount of exorcism can drive it out; Jean Parrottin had devoted
his entire life to contemplating his Right: nothing else. Instead of
the faint headache which I felt starting up, as it does each time I
visit a museum, he had felt in his day the: painful right to be cared
for. It was not at all necessary that he be made to think too much,
that
his
attention be drawn to unpleasant realities, to his possible
death, to the sufferings of other men. Doubtless on his death bed, at
that hour at which it has been the custom since Socrates to make a
noble speech, he had said to
his
wife, as an uncle of mine said to
his
wife after she had watched over him for twelve nights: "I do
not thank you, Therese. You have only done your duty." When ·a
man reaches that point, you have to take off your hat to him.
