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Updated: May 14, 2025
"Hold your tongues, all of you, and look at that," said M. Manotel, who had joined the agitated group. He was pointing towards the departing Jean Jacques, who was now away upon his road. Jean Jacques had raised the cage on a level with his face, and was evidently speaking to the bird in the way birds love that soft kissing sound to which they reply with song.
His carpet-bag containing a few clothes and necessaries had been sent on to the junction, and he meant to walk to the station in the cool of the evening. M. Manotel, the auctioneer, hoarse with his heavy day's work, was announcing that there were only a few more things to sell, and no doubt they could be had at a bargain, when Jean Jacques began a tour of the Manor.
Then she raised the price by ten dollars, and her rival, seeing that he was face to face with a woman who would now bid till her last dollar was at stake, withdrew; and Virginie was left triumphant with the heirloom. At the moment when Virginie turned away with the handsome dish from M. Manotel, and the crowd cheered her gaily, she caught Jean-Jacques' eye, and she came straight towards him.
"Four dollars five dollars: do I hear no more than five dollars? going once, going twice, going three times gone!" he cried, for no one had made a further bid; and indeed M. Manotel would not have heard another voice than Jean Jacques' if it had been as loud as the falls of the Saguenay. He was a kind of poet in his way, was M. Manotel.
Anyone else than M. Manotel, or perhaps M. Fille or the New Cure, would have hesitated to take the five dollars, or, if they had done so, would have handed it back; but they had souls to understand this Jean Jacques, and they would not deny him his insistent independence. And so, in a moment, he was making his way out of the crowd with the cage in his hand, the bird silent now.
Then he remembered he had no money he who all his life had been able to take a roll of bills from his pocket as another man took a packet of letters. His glance fell in shame, and the words died on his lips, even as M. Manotel, the auctioneer, was about to add another five-dollar bid to the price, which already was standing at forty dollars.
Anyone else than M. Manotel, or perhaps M. Fille or the New Cure, would have hesitated to take the five dollars, or, if they had done so, would have handed it back; but they had souls to understand this Jean Jacques, and they would not deny him his insistent independence. And so, in a moment, he was making his way out of the crowd with the cage in his hand, the bird silent now.
The hammer that struck the bell of his voice was the hammer of memory, and if it was plaintive it also was clear, and it was also vibrant with the silver of lost hopes. M. Manotel humoured him, while the bird still sang.
"Hold your tongues, all of you, and look at that," said M. Manotel, who had joined the agitated group. He was pointing towards the departing Jean Jacques, who was now away upon his road. Jean Jacques had raised the cage on a level with his face, and was evidently speaking to the bird in the way birds love that soft kissing sound to which they reply with song.
In the applausive silence, the emotional recess of the sale, as it were, the man to whom the bird and the song meant most, pushed his way up to the stand where M. Manotel stood. When the people saw who it was, they fell back, for there was that in his face which needed no interpretation. It filled them with a kind of awe.
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