Ever since that cry the other night, my head had been full of whimsies. No, I had never seen that puffy, dirty face—that podgy body.
His eyes seemed kindly enough—stupid, but good and endearing. Um! What a curious indifference in his face! He must be a lazy chap, though.
The prisoner was snoozing, badly, it seemed. The flies were annoying him. He drives them away with a sudden clumsy gesture of his hand. His indolent eye follows their flight between his snoozes, and sometimes, seized with a fit of anger, and making his lips smack together with a sudden movement of his head, he tries to snap up the insects that irritate him so as they pass by.
The madman! There is a madman in my uncle’s house!! Who could he be? My eyelids touched the keyhole. My eye became frozen. The other one, taking its turn of duty, is rather short-sighted. I saw very badly. My line of sight was rather narrow. Good God! I have hit the door and made a noise. The madman has jumped up! How small he is! Hallo! here he is coming towards me! Suppose I were to open the door? Ah! Now he is throwing himself on the floor and sniffing and growling. Poor fellow! It is a sad sight.
He had guessed nothing. Crouching in the track of the sunray, and all striped with the shadow of the shutters, I could more easily examine him.
His hands and face were spotted with little rosy stains, like old scratches. One would have said that he had been fighting.
Ah! but this is graver. A long purple scar goes under his hair, from one temple to the other, round the back of his head. It is very likely the scar of a wound.
The poor fellow has been ill-treated. Lerne has made him undergo some horrible treatment, or he is wreaking some vengeance on him. Oh! the brute!
Immediately an association of ideas worked in my brain. I remembered the Indian profile of my uncle, the unusual locks of Emma,—those of the madman which are so yellow, and the green fleece of the rat. Can Lerne be trying to graft hairy scalps on bald scalps? Can that be the enterprise?—and immediately I see that my idea is absurd. Nothing corroborates it, and then (this is a clinching argument) the madman has not been scalped, as in that case his scar would have described a complete circle. Why should he not have gone mad simply through a fall on the back of his head? At any rate, he is not a dangerous lunatic. He is harmless. He has rather a nice expression. His eyes now shine with a sort of intelligence. I am sure if I questioned him gently he would answer. Suppose I tried.
Only a bolt closed the door on my side. I drew it deliberately, but before I got into the Yellow Room, the recluse dashed forward, head downwards—passed between my legs, knocked me down, and then escaped, with those dog’s yelps which the other night had made me take him for a practical joker.