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Updated: May 5, 2025
"Nice little man," said Adams to himself as he walked down the Boulevard Haussmann. He found Ferminard at home, in an apartment smelling of garlic and the south.
Ferminard was, in fact, a great child with a good heart, a Provençal imagination, a power of oratory, a quickness in seizing upon little things and making them seem great, coupled with a rather obscure understanding as to the relative value of mountains and mole-hills. A noise maker of a first-class description, but useless for any serious work. Feu de bruit was his motto, and he lived up to it.
As a child lets a Noah's Ark fall from its hands elephants, zebras and all on to the floor whilst he grasps for a new toy so Ferminard let Africa tumble whilst he grasped for Socialism, found it and swung it like a rattle, and Socialism went the way of Africa as he seized at last that darling toy himself.
Ferminard, a tall, black-bearded creature, with a glittering eye; a brigand from the Rhone Valley who had flung himself into the politics of his country as a torpedo flings itself into the sea, greeted Adams with effusion, when he read Pugin's card; gave him cigarettes, and shut the open window in honour of his guest.
"And one moment," cried the little man, after he had bidden his visitor good-bye and the latter was leaving the room. "One moment; why did I not think of it before? You might go and see Ferminard."
He ran to a desk in the corner of the room, took a visiting card and scribbled Ferminard's address upon it, explaining as he wrote that Ferminard was the deputy for in Provence; a Socialist it is true, but a terrible man when roused; that the very name of injustice was sufficient to bring this lion from his den.
One would have fancied from the fervour of the man that is was Ferminard who had just returned from the Congo, not Adams. Well, a moment after, and Africa had quite fallen out of the discussion.
As Adams listened, delighted to have awakened such a trumpet; as he listened to Ferminard thundering against all that over there, speaking as though he were addressing the Chambre, and as though he had known Africa intimately from his childhood, he noticed gradually and with alarm that the topic was changing; just a moment ago it was Africa and its luckless niggers; the Provençal imagination picturing them in glowing colours, and the Provençal tongue rolling off their disabilities and woes.
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