outside demanding to be made prisoners. Would the Directeur allow it? They had been told a number of times by plantons to go away, as they sat patiently waiting to be admitted to captivity. No threats, pleas nor arguments had availed. The wife said she was tired of living without her husband—roars of laughter from all the Belgians and most of the Hollanders, I regret to say Pete included—and wanted merely and simply to share his confinement. Moreover, she said, without him she was unable to support his children! and it was better that they should grow up with their father as prisoners than starve to death without him. She would not be moved. The Black Holster told her he would use force—she answered nothing. Finally she had been admitted pending judgment. Also sprach, highly excited, the balayeur.
"Looks like a—hoor," was the Belgian-Dutch verdict, a verdict which was obviously due to the costume of the lady in question almost as much as to the untemperamental natures sojourning at La Ferté. B. and I agreed that she and her children were the most beautiful people we had ever seen, or would ever be likely to see. So la soupe ended, and everybody belched and gasped and trumpeted up to The Enormous Room as usual.
That evening, about six o'clock, I heard a man crying as if his heart were broken. I crossed The Enormous Room. Half-lying on his paillasse, his great beard pouring upon his breast, his face lowered, his entire body shuddering with sobs, lay The Wanderer. Several of the men were about him, standing in attitudes ranging from semi-amusement to stupid sympathy, listening to the anguish which—as from time to time he lifted his majestic head—poured slowly and brokenly from his lips. I sat down beside him. And he told me: "I bought him for six hundred francs, and I sold him for four hundred and fifty ... it was not a horse of this race, but of the race" (I could not catch the word) "as long as from here to that post. I cried for a quarter of an hour just as if my child were dead ... and it is seldom I weep over horses—I say: you are going, Jewel, au r'oir et bon jour." ...
