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Updated: June 3, 2025
A strange, painful silence fell on the people for a moment, and then went round an almost incredulous whisper: "Parpon the dwarf!" Parpon's deep eyes were fixed on the Cure, his hunched body leaning on the railing in front of him, his long, strong arms stretched out as if he were begging for some good thing.
One's voice is all to one's self there, as you know. Well, sing us the song of the little brown diver." Parpon's hands twitched in his beard. He looked fixedly at Medallion. Presently he turned towards the Cure, and shrank so that he looked smaller still. "It's all right, little son," said the Cure kindly. Turning sharply on Medallion, Parpon said: "When was it you heard?" Medallion told him.
Through the sounds there came another inner voice, that resolved all the crude, primitive thoughts here defined; vague, elusive, in Parpon's own brain. The girl's life should be saved at any cost, even if to save it meant the awful and certain doom his mother had whispered to him over the bed an hour before. He turned and went into the house.
Parpon's pleasant ridicule was not lost on the charcoalman and the mealman; but neither was the singing wasted; and their faces were touched with admiration, while the blacksmith, with a sigh, turned to his fire and blew the bellows softly. "Blacksmith," said Parpon, "you have a bird that sings." "I've no bird that sings like that, though she has pretty notes, my bird." He sighed again.
A look of bewilderment and joy swam into Parpon's eyes. Then he gave a laugh of singular wildness, his face twitched, tears rushed down his cheeks, and he threw himself at Valmond's feet, and clasped his knees, crying: "Ah-ah, my prince, great brother, thou hast come also! Ah, thou didst know the way up the long hill Thou hast come to the burial of a fool. But he had a mother yes, yes, a mother!
The children had been well rehearsed, for even as Valmond arrived upon the scene, Lagroin and Parpon on either side of him, the mock Valmond was bidding the drummer: "Play up the feet of the army!" The crowd parted on either side, silenced and awed by the look of potential purpose in the face of this yesterday's hero. The old sergeant's glance was full of fury, Parpon's of a devilish sort of glee.
Parpon's hands alone cared for the house; he did all that was to be done; no woman had entered the place since Pomfrette's cousin, old Mme. Burgoyne, left it on the day of his shame. When at last Pomfrette opened his eyes, and saw the Cure standing beside him, he turned his face to the wall, and to the exhortation addressed to him he answered nothing.
A half-mad woman, without memory, knew again whence she came and whither she was going; and bewildered and happy, with a hungering tenderness, moved her hand over the head of her poor dwarf, as though she would know if he were truly her own son. A new spirit also had come into Parpon's eyes, gentler, less weird, less distant. With the advent of their joy a great yearning came to save Elise.
"I carry home the harness of a soul." "Is it worth carrying home?" "The eyes grow sick at sight of the old harness in the way." The watching figure, hearing, pitied. It was Valmond. Excited by Parpon's last words at the hotel, he had followed, and was keen to chase this strange journeying to the end, though suffering from the wound in his head, and shaken by the awful accident of the evening.
Little grey man who comes Over the water, I have knelt down at her feet, Knelt at your Gabrielle's feet -ci ci!" Presently the wife of the governor stepped out from her sleigh, and, coming over, quickly took Parpon's cap from his hand and went round among the crowd with it, gathering money. "He is hungry, he is poor," she said, with tears in her eyes.
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