“Don't you remember one who wore corduroys?”
The painter searched his memory. “I believe I do. A rather frail chap, looking as if he'd been sick?”
“That was Cottin.”
Jesse exhibited astonishment — and his nephew watched him closely. Was it genuine, or was it good acting? No doubt many comrades of the young anarchist were forgetting him just now. Distrust of his uncle had been so deeply ground into Lanny's mind that he was never sure if any of the painter's emotions were genuine.
Beauty interrupted the drama with some remark about the wickedness of shooting that poor old man who was doing so much for France. This caused her brother to turn upon her with what certainly seemed a genuine emotion. He said that attempts at assassination were foolish, because they didn't accomplish the purpose desired; but so far as wickedness was concerned, how about statesmen and diplomats who had caused the murder of ten million innocent persons and the destruction of three hundred billions of dollars' worth of property? And what were you going to say about bureaucrats and politicians who left the poor to stand in line for hours waiting for a chance to buy a few scraps of half-spoiled food at twice the prices charged before the war?
Jesse Blackless was started on the same speech he had made at the meeting. He told about food rotting in warehouses at Le Havre and Marseille, about freight cars rusting idle — and all because speculators reaped fortunes out of every increase in prices. “What does it mean to you that the cost of living in Paris has doubled, and that some foods cost five or six times as much? All you have to do is to ask Robbie for another check.”
“I assure you you're mistaken,” said Beauty, spunkily — for she had had plenty of practice quarreling with her brother. “I've lost ten pounds since I came to Paris.”
“Well, it's probably due to dancing all night, not to going hungry. I don't go into the smart restaurants, but I pass them and see they're crowded all night with bemedaled men and half-naked women.”
“That's because Paris is so full of strangers. People sit packed at the tables so that they haven't room to move their elbows.”
“Well, they manage to get the food. But the people I know haven't tasted a morsel of sugar in four years, and now they stand in the rain and snow for hours for a loaf of bread or a basket of fuel. Is it any more wicked to kill a cynical old politician than to starve a million women and children so that they die of anemia or pneumonia?”