Savagely he took the thing between plump thumb and forefinger and bore it from the stateroom, holding it at arm's length. In the corridor, with the door shut on the shaggy one, Monsieur Pettipon, feverishly agitated, muttered again and again, "He did bring it with him. He did bring it with him."
All that night Monsieur Pettipon lay in his berth, stark awake, and brooded. The material side of the affair was bad enough. The shaggy one would report the matter to the head steward of the second class; Monsieur Pettipon would be ignominiously discharged; the sin, he had to admit, merited the extremest penalty. Jobs are hard to get, particularly when one is fat and past forty. He saw the Pettipons ejected from their flat; he saw his little Napoleon a café waiter instead of a virtuoso. All this was misery enough. But it was the spiritual side that tortured him most poignantly, that made him toss and moan as the waves swished against the liner's sides and an ocean dawn stole foggily through the porthole. He was a failure at the work he loved.
Consider the emotions of an artist who suddenly realizes that his masterpiece is a tawdry smear; consider the shock to a gentleman, proud of his name, who finds a blot black as midnight on the escutcheon he had for many prideful years thought stainless. To the mind of the crushed Pettipon came the thought that even though his job was irretrievably lost he still might be able to save his honor.
As early as it was possible he went to the head steward of the second class, his immediate superior.
There were tears in Monsieur Pettipon's eyes and voice as he said, "Monsieur Deveau, a great misfortune, as you have doubtless been informed, has overtaken me."
The head steward of the second class looked up sharply. He was in a bearish mood, for he had lost eleven francs at cards the night before.
"Well, Monsieur Pettipon?" he asked brusquely.
"Oh, he has heard about it, he has heard about it," thought Monsieur Pettipon; and his voice trembled as he said aloud, "I have done faithful work on the Voltaire for twenty-two years, Monsieur Deveau, and such a thing has never before happened."
"What thing? Of what do you speak? Out with it, man."
"This!" cried Monsieur Pettipon tragically.