Livres pour Tout

Chapter 11

beard, bordering two red, swollen cheeks; and with his begrimed
hands he rubbed lustily his inflamed eyes--once brown, large, and
earnest--now glassy and sunken.

"I'm all square, ain't I?" he inquires, looking with vacant stare
into the faces of those who tease him with facetious remarks, then
scans his haberdashery. There yet remains something displeasing to
him. His sense of taste is at stake. This something proves to be a
sooty striped shirt, open in front, and disclosing the remains of a
red flannel under-garment. Every few minutes will he, as if touched
with a sense of shame, wriggle his shoulders, and pull forward the
wreck of his collarless coat, apparently much annoyed that it fails
to cover the breastwork of his distress.

Again he thrusts his hands into his pockets, and with an air of
apparent satisfaction, struts twice or thrice across the dingy room,
as if he would show how far he has gained his equilibrium. "I shall
go straight mad; yes, mad, if the whiskey be not brought in," he
pursues, stopping short in one of his sallies, and with a rhetorical
flourish, pointing at the piece of silver he so exultingly tossed
upon the table. As if his brain were again seized by the destroyer's
flame, his countenance becomes livid, his eyes glare wildly upon
each object near him; then he draws himself into a tragic attitude,
contorts hideously his more hideous face, throws his cap scornfully
to the ground, and commences tearing from his head the matted black
hair that confusedly covers it. "If my mother thinks this a fit
place for me--" He pauses in the middle of his sentence, gives an
imploring stare at his companions, shakes and hangs down his head;
then his brain reels, and his frame trembles, and like a lifeless
mass he falls to the floor.

"I'm gone now--gone--gone--gone!" he mutters, with a spasmodic effort,
covering his face with his hands.

"He'll go mad; you can only save him with a hair of the same dog,"
one of the prisoner's measuredly suggests, folding his arms, and