Having thus begun to reveal to me his inmost thoughts, Lamuse continues. Coming nearer and lowering his head, he says to me, "You know she's here—Eudoxie?"
"Ah!" said I.
"Yes, old chap. You never notice anything, you don't, but I noticed," and Lamuse smiles at me indulgently. "Now, do you catch on? If she's come here, it's because we interest her, eh? She's followed us for one of us, and don't you forget it."
He gets going again. "My boy, d'you want to know what I say? She's come after me."
"Are you sure of it, old chap?"
"Yes," says the ox-man, in a hollow voice. "First, I want her. Then, twice, old man, I've found her exactly in my path, in mine, d'you understand? You may tell me that she ran away; that's because she's timid, that, yes—"
He stopped dead in the middle of the street and looked straight at me. The heavy face, greasily moist on the cheeks and nose, was serious. His rotund fist went up to the dark yellow mustache, so carefully pointed, and smoothed it tenderly. Then he continued to lay bare his heart to me "I want her; but, you know, I shall marry her all right, I shall. She's called Eudoxie Dumail. At first, I wasn't thinking of marrying her. But since I've got to know her family name, it seems to me that it's different, and I should get on all right. Ah, nom de Dieu! She's so pretty, that woman! And it's not only that she's pretty—ah!"
The huge child was overflowing with sentiment and emotion, and trying to make them speak to me. "Ah, my boy, there are times when I've just got to hold myself back with a hook," came the strained and gloomy tones, while the blood flushed to the fleshy parts of his cheeks and neck. "She's so beautiful, she's—and me I'm—she's so unlike—you'll have noticed it, surely, you that notices—she's a country girl, oui; eh bien, she's got a God knows what that's better than a Parisienne, even a toffed-up and stylish Parisienne, pas? She—as for me, I—"
He puckered his red eyebrows. He would have liked to tell me all the splendor of his thoughts, but he knew not the art of expressing himself, so he was silent. He remained alone in his voiceless emotion, as always alone.
We went forward side by side between the rows of houses. In front of the doors, drays laden with casks were drawn up. The front windows blossomed with many-hued heaps of jam-pots, stacks of tinder pipe-lighters—everything that the soldier is compelled to buy. Nearly all the natives had gone into grocery. Business had been getting out of gear locally for a long time, but now it was booming. Every one, smitten with the fever of sum-totals and dazzled by the multiplication table, plunged into trade.