“‘There’s no room for me anywhere else.’
“I made a place for him and he took it without a word. He became immediately content and self-absorbed like a babe that, after crying and kicking, has found its mother’s breast.
“He is now sitting with both elbows on the table. In one hand he grasps a fish tightly; he held that fish in his hand all the time he was confronting me. Ah! Now he is yelling to the counter for vodka. He is a rough customer. A tall labourer in a red shirt bent over to me just now and asked me if I knew what his name was.
“‘His name is Dung.’
“Everyone in the room laughed. Even the gendarme grinned. The peasant repeated his joke. It was evidently his only stock and store. Perhaps his father taught him that joke, and he in his turn had it from his grandfather. He is at this moment addressing the peasant of the human thatch.
“‘Mr Dung, ha, ha, ha. Your Excellency Baron Dung, a word with you, ha, ha, ha,’ etc. etc. etc. But, strange to say, my antagonist pays no attention whatever, but regards his fish and his, as yet, untasted, vodka with the eye of an expert mathematician who is pondering some more-than-usually-interesting problem.
“There has not been much occasion for ennui since I came in here. A Lettish pedlar has come in, he has a face like an American music-hall hobo, a tramp artiste. So you would say to see his high-arched eyebrows and his long mouth. But he is a poor starved wretch, and there may be some truth in his reiterated assertion that he has been robbed of three farthings. If he doesn’t stop screeching out that fact the gendarme is likely to throw him out or take him to the ‘lock-up.’ My attention is divided between him and a girl at the bar. During the last ten minutes a peasant lass has taken five glasses of vodka, and a well-dressed man, himself drunk, is making clumsy attempts to kiss her. She grins and reels about—a country girl. She smiles idiotically and tries to steer her cheek and lips away from the man’s moustache. If he were a little less unsteady on his feet he would have no difficulty, I am sure. The man is making us all a speech now, and the peasants are jesting according to their knowledge of jests. The gendarme strolls fretfully up and down, his fingers twitching. Oh, my acquaintance with the one joke has risen and is addressing the man who has been ‘treating’ the girl. He caught hold of the man with the thatched head; the latter rose, thinking the policeman wanted him. But no!
“‘Allow me to introduce you to Mr—’
“‘Here, I’ve heard enough of that, you go out,’ says the gendarme, and grasps the joking man to put him out.
“Then up speaks the pedlar.