“The late Polydore——” Fortinbras began.
“Ah! Finish with it, I beg you,” interrupted Bigourdin, with an unusual air of impatience.
“It isn’t a joke, I assure you,” said Martin. “I have come to the end of my resources. I must work. You will, sooner or later have to fill the place of Polydore. Give me the wages of Polydore and I am ready to fill it. I could not be more incapable, and perhaps I am a little more intelligent.”
“It is serious?”
“As serious as can be.”
Bigourdin passed his hand over his face. “I went to sleep last night in a commonplace world, I wake up this morning to a fantastic universe in which I seem to be a leaf, like those outside”—he threw a dramatic arm—“driven by the wind. I don’t know whether I am on my head or my heels. Arrange things as seems best to you.”
“You accept me then as waiter in the Hôtel des Grottes?”
“Mon cher,” said Bigourdin, “in the state of upheaval in which I find myself I accept everything.”
The upheaval or rather overthrow—for he used the word “bouleversement”—of the big man was evident. He sat the dejected picture of defeat. No man in the throes of sea-sickness ever cared less what happened to him. Fortinbras looked at him shrewdly and his thick lips formed themselves into a noiseless whistle. Then he exchanged a glance with Martin, who suddenly conjectured the reason of Bigourdin’s depression.
“She ought to be spanked,” said he in English.