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Updated: May 2, 2025
At this moment, at the far end of the room, I seemed to see an extraordinary vulture-like silhouette leap up from nowhere. It rushed a little way in my direction crying hoarsely "Corvee d'eau!" stopped, bent down at what I perceived to be a paillasse like mine, jerked what was presumably the occupant by the feet, shook him, turned to the next, and so on up to six.
Maman Archambault went out to her paillasse in the hall, the night wore on, but without sleep for Pauline, and towards morning so intense were her sufferings that a messenger was sent for Dr. Renaud, who came as requested and was destined to come again and again for many a weary month.
Here they were left to their reflections, and to what comfort they could derive fron a lamp and a supply of provisions. Hassan, wearied with his journey, hastily swallowed his supper, and, stretching himself upon a paillasse, soon forgot his calamities in sound repose.
He got his from Jean le Negre, as the reader will learn later. Third, a super-Western-Union-Messenger type of ancient-youth, extraordinarily unhandsome if not positively ugly. Then he returned to his paillasse, lay down with apparently supreme contentment, and fell asleep.
Then he faced the most prominently vociferous corner and muttered thickly and crazily: "Wuhwuhwuhwuhwuh...." Then he strode rapidly to his paillasse and lay down; in which position I caught him, a few minutes later, smiling and even chuckling ... very happy ... as only an actor is happy whose efforts have been greeted with universal applause....
and with a speed in comparison to which lightning is snail-like the tower reached twice for the peaches-and-cream cheeks of the prone victim; who set up a tragic bellowing of his own, writhed upon his somewhat dislocated paillasse, raised his elbows shieldingly, and started to get to his feet by way of his trembling knees to be promptly knocked flat.
In the corner was a low wooden bedstead with dingy curtains suspended from a rafter, and a paillasse of maize-leaves with a thin wool mattress above it. Coarse hempen sheets and a coloured coverlet completed the bedding. By the side against the wall was a broad prie-Dieu, with a lithograph just above it of the Holy Child bearing the cross.
Whereat Bill The Hollander registered a disgusted kick in The Young Pole's direction and swearingly resumed his paillasse. All this, the reader understands, having taken place in the terribly cold darkness of the half-dawn. And a pretty picture Judas made. And a pretty bum job he made. But anyway the stove-pipe drew; and everyone thanked God and fought for places about le poele.
Two burnished shells tattooed in a careful pattern and filled with flowers brighten the mantel. And the bed! Even though made of fragments found in the debris, with naught but a hay paillasse and a few old quilts dragged through the long flight and return, it is nevertheless smooth and noble, adorned only with the reverence and importance with which the French surround The Bed.
I turned in terror to see my paillasse in the clutches of four men who were apparently rending it in as many directions. One was a clean-shaven youngish man with lively eyes, alert and muscular, whom I identified as the man who had called me "Johnny."
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