The Vatican swindle

by André Gide

Setting his candle on the bed, he tracked them down, opened out the fold and discovered five of them. Not daring to squash them with his finger-nail, he flung them in disgust into his chamber-pot and watered them copiously. He watched them struggling for a few moments—pleased and ferocious. It soothed his feelings. Then he got back into bed and blew out his candle.

The bites began again almost immediately with redoubled violence. There were new ones now on the back of his neck. He lighted his candle once more in a rage and took his night-shirt right off this time so as to examine the collar at his leisure. At last he perceived four or five minute light red specks running along the edge of the seam; he crushed them on the linen, where they left a stain of blood—horrid little creatures, so tiny that he could hardly believe that they were bugs already; but a little later, on raising his bolster again, he unearthed an enormous one—their mother for certain; at that, encouraged, excited, amused almost, he took off the bolster, undid the sheets and began a methodical search. He fancied now that he saw them everywhere, but as a matter of fact caught only four; he went back to bed and enjoyed an hour’s peace.

Then the burning and itching began again. Once more he started the hunt; then, worn out at last with disgust and fatigue, gave it up, and noticed that if he did not scratch, the itching subsided pretty quickly. At dawn the last of the creatures, presumably gorged, let him be. He was sleeping heavily when the waiter called him in time for his train.

At Toulon it was fleas.

He picked them up in the train, no doubt. All night long he scratched himself, turning from side to side without sleeping. He felt them creeping up and down his legs, tickling the small of his back, inoculating him with fever. As he had a sensitive skin, their bites rose in exuberant swellings, which he inflamed with unrestrained scratching. He lit his candle over and over again; he got up, took off his night-shirt and put it on again, without being able to kill a single one. He hardly caught a fleeting glimpse of them; they continually escaped him, and even when he succeeded in catching them, when he thought they were flattened dead beneath his finger-nail, they suddenly and instantaneously blew themselves out again and hopped away as safe and lively as ever. He was driven to regretting the bugs. His fury and exasperation of the useless chase effectually wrecked every possibility of sleep.

All next day the bites of the previous night itched horribly, while fresh creepings and ticklings showed him that he was still infested. The excessive heat considerably increased his discomfort. The carriage was packed to overflowing with workmen, who drank, smoked, spat, belched and ate such high-smelling victuals that more than once Fleurissoire thought he was going to be sick. And yet he did not dare leave the carriage before reaching the frontier, for fear that the workmen might see him get into another and imagine they were incommoding him; in the compartment into which he next got, there was a voluminous wet-nurse, who was changing her baby’s napkins. He tried nevertheless to sleep; but then his hat got in his way. It was one of those shallow, white straw hats with a black ribbon round it, of the kind commonly known as “sailor.” When Fleurissoire left it in its usual position, its stiff brim prevented him from leaning his head back against the partition of the carriage; if, in order to do this, he raised his hat a little, the partition bumped it forwards; when, on the contrary, he pressed his hat down behind, the brim was caught between the partition and the back of his neck, and the sailor rose up over his forehead like the lid of a valve. He decided at last to take it right off and to cover his head with his comforter, which he arranged to fall over his eyes so as to keep out the light. At any rate, he had taken precautions against the night; at Toulon that morning he had bought a box of insecticide and, even if he had to pay dear for it, he thought to himself that he would not hesitate to spend the night in one of the best hotels; for if he had no sleep that night, in what state of bodily wretchedness would he not be when he arrived at Rome?—at the mercy of the meanest freemason!

At Genoa he found the omnibuses of the principal hotels drawn up outside the station; he went straight up to one of the most comfortable-looking, without letting himself be intimidated by the haughtiness of the hotel servant, who seized hold of his miserable portmanteau; but Amédée refused to be parted from it; he would not allow it to be put on the roof of the carriage, but insisted that it should be placed next him—there—on the same seat. In the hall of the hotel the porter put him at his ease by talking French; then he let himself go and, not content with asking for “a very good room,” inquired the prices of those that were offered him, determined to find nothing to his liking for less than twelve francs.

The seventeen-franc room which he settled on after looking at several, was vast, clean, and elegant without ostentation; the bed stood out from the wall—a bright brass bed, which was certainly uninhabited, and to which his precautions would have been an insult. The washstand was concealed in a kind of enormous cupboard. Two large windows opened on to a garden; Amédée leant out into the night and gazed long at the indistinct mass of sombre foliage, letting the cool air calm his fever and invite him to sleep. From above the bed there hung down a cloudy veil of tulle, which exactly draped three sides of it, and which was looped up in a graceful festoon on the fourth by a few little cords, like those that take in the reefs of a sail. Fleurissoire recognised that this was what is known as a mosquito net—a device which he had always disdained to make use of.

After having washed, he stretched himself luxuriously in the cool sheets. He left the window open—not wide open, of course, for fear of cold in the head and ophthalmia, but with one side fixed in such a way as to prevent the night effluvia from striking him directly; did his accounts, said his prayers and put out the light. (This was electric and the current was cut off by turning down a switch.)

Fleurissoire was just going off to sleep when a faint humming reminded him that he had failed to take the precaution of putting out his light before opening his window; for light attracts mosquitoes. He remembered, too, that he had somewhere read praises of the Lord, who has bestowed on this winged insect a special musical instrument, designed to warn the sleeper the moment before he is going to be stung. Then he let down the impenetrable muslin barrier all round him. “After all,” thought he to himself as he was dropping off, “how much better this is than those little felt cones of dried hay, which old Blafaphas sells under the quaint name of ‘fidibus’; one lights them on a little metal saucer; as they burn they give out a quantity of narcotic fumes; but before they stupefy the mosquitoes, they half stifle the sleeper. Fidibus! What a funny name! Fidibus....” He was just going off, when suddenly a sharp sting on the left side of his nose awoke him. He put his hand to the place and as he was softly stroking the raised and burning flesh—another sting on his wrist. Then right against his ear there sounded the mock of an impertinent buzzing.... Horror! he had shut the enemy up within the citadel! He reached out to the switch and turned on the light.