The old man drawled more and more lazily, and this was very irritating. It seemed to me that he was standing on a hillock in the midst of a quagmire. It was impossible to make him angry. Either he was above rage, or he was able to hide it very successfully.
But he often happened to be the one to start a dispute with me. He would come quite close to me, and smiling into his beard, remark:
"What do you call that French writer—Ponoss?" I was desperately angry at this silly way of turning the names upside down. But holding myself in for the time, I said:
"Ponson de Terrail."
"Where was he lost?"[1]
"Don't play the fool. You are not a child." "That is true. I am not a child. What are you reading?"
"'Ephrem Siren.'"
"And who writes best. Your foreign authors? or he?"
I made no reply.
"What do the foreign ones write about most?"