The man came clattering across the square in his wooden shoes.
“A telegram,” repeated the mayor, wiping the sudden sweat from his forehead. “I never get telegrams. I don’t want telegrams!”
He turned to me, almost bursting with suppressed prophecy.
“It has come—the evil that the black cruiser brings us! You laughed! Tenez, monsieur; there’s your bad luck in these blue morsels of paper!” 170
And he snatched the telegram from the breathless messenger, reading it with dilating eyes.
For a long while he sat there studying the telegram, his fat forefinger following the scrawl, a crease deepening above his eyebrows, and all the while his lips moved in noiseless repetition of the words he spelled with difficulty and his labored breathing grew louder.
When at length the magistrate had mastered the contents of his telegram, he looked up with a stupid stare.
“I want my drummer. Where’s the town-crier?” he demanded, as though dazed.
“He has gone to Lorient, m’sieu the mayor,” ventured the messenger.
“To get drunk. I remember. Imbecile! Why did he go to-day? Are there not six other days in this cursed week? Who is there to drum? Nobody. Nobody knows how in Paradise. Seigneur, Dieu! the ignorance of this town!”