The hip had finished.
“Sign your name, here,” he said, and I did. He looked about in one of the tomes and checked something opposite my name, which I enjoyed seeing in the list of inmates. It had been spelled, erased, and re-spelled several times.
Monsieur le Gestionnaire contemplated my signature. Then he looked up, smiled and nodded recognition to someone behind me. I turned. There stood (having long since noiselessly entered) The Fencer Himself, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back and regarding me with approval, or as a keeper regards some rare monkey newly forwarded from its habitat by Hagenbeck.
The hippo pulled out a drawer. He found, after hunting, some notes. He counted two off, licking his big thumb with a pompous gesture, and having recounted them passed them heavily to me. I took them as a monkey takes a cocoanut.
“Do you wish?”—the Gestionnaire nodded toward me, addressing the Fencer.
“No, no” the Fencer said bowingly. “I have talked to him already.”
“Call that planton!” cried Monsieur le Gestionnaire, to the little thing. The little thing ran out dutifully and called in a weak voice “Planton!”
A gruff but respectful “Oui” boomed from below-stairs. In a moment the planton of plantons had respectfully entered.
“The promenade being over, you can take him to the men’s room,” said the Surveillant, as the Hippo (immensely relieved and rather proud of himself) collapsed in his creaking chair.
Feeling like a suit-case in the clutches of a porter, I obediently preceded my escort down two flights, first having bowed to the hippopotamus and said “Merci”—to which courtesy the Hippo paid no attention. As we went along the dank hall on the ground floor, I regretted that no whispers and titters had greeted my descent. Probably the furious planton had seen to it that les femmes kept their rooms in silence. We ascended the three flights at the farther end of the corridor, the planton of all plantons unlocked and unbolted the door at the top landing, and I was swallowed by The Enormous Room.