PA RTISAN RE V lEW
347
long line of maleficent beings. His uniform, sickly green in colour, its
place of honour rife with heroic emblems and badges, suited him
down to the ground. Inspired by the example of the great Sarsfield he
had risked his life without success in defence of a territory which in
itself must have left him cold and considered as a symbol cannot have
greatly heated him either. He carried a stick at once elegant and mas–
sive and even leaned on it from time
to
time. He suffered torment with
his hip, the pain shot down his buttock and up his rectum deep into
the bowels and even as far north as the pyloric valve, culminating as a
matter of course in uretro-scrotal spasms with quasi-incessant longing
to micturate. Invalided out with a grudging pension, whence the sour
looks of nearly all those, male and female, with whom his duties and
remnants of bonhomie brought him daily in contact, he sometimes felt
it wou ld have been wiser on his part, during the great upheaval, to
devote his energies to the domestic skirmish, the Gaelic dialect, the
fortification of his faith and the treasures of a folklore beyond com–
pare. The bodily danger would have been less and the benefits more
certain. But this thought, when he had relished all its bitterness, he
would banish from his mind, as unworthy of it. His moustache, once
stiff as the lip it was grown to hide, was no longer so. From time to
time, when he remembered, with a blast from below of fetid breath
mingled with spittle, he straightened it momentarily. Motionless at
the foot of the pagoda steps, his cape agape, streaming with rain, he
darted his eyes
to
and from, from Mercier and Camier
to
the dogs, from
the dogs to Mercier and Camier.
Who owns that bicycle? he said.
Mercier and Camier exchanged a look.
We could have done without this, said Camier.
Shift her, said the ranger.
It
may prove diverting, said Mercier.
Who owns them dogs? said the ranger.
I don' t see how we can stay, said Camier.
Can it I wonder be the fillip we needed, to get us moving? said
Mercier.
The ranger mounted the
s~eps
of the shelter and stood stockstill in
the doorway. The air darkened immediately and turned a deeper
yellow.
I think he is about to attack us, said Camier.
I leave the balls
to
you , as usual, said Mercier.
