WELLINGTON’S ROOM

It was night when he awoke. Chilled with cold he turned from side to side in his bed, crumpling and rolling his black overall under him. A faint yellow light bathed the curtains of the alcove.

Sitting up on the bed he pushed his head between the curtains. Some one had opened the window and had hung two green Chinese lanterns in the aperture.

But Meaulnes had scarcely time for one look around before he heard soft footsteps on the landing and whispers. He started back into the alcove and his hobnailed shoes rang against one of the bronze ornaments which he had pushed close to the wall.

For an instant he held his breath in anxiety. The footsteps were approaching and two shadows glided into the room.

‘Don’t make any noise,’ said one.

‘Well!’ replied the other, ‘it’s high time he woke up!’

‘Got his room ready?’

‘Of course, just like the others.’

The wind made the window swing.

‘Look,’ said the first, ‘you didn’t even shut the window. The wind has blown out one of the lanterns already. We shall have to light it again.’

‘Bah!’ replied the other, suddenly lazy and discouraged, ‘what’s the good of these illuminations on the countryside, the desert side so to say? There is nobody to see them!’

‘Nobody? But more people will be coming most of the night. Down there, on the road, in their carriages, they will be glad to see our lights!’

Meaulnes heard a match struck. The one who had spoken last, and who appeared to be the leader, went on in a drawling voice, like a gravedigger in Shakespeare:

‘You are putting up green lanterns in the Wellington room. You would just as soon put red.... You know no more about it than I do!’

Silence.

‘... Wellington, he was an American chap? Well! Is green an American colour? You’re the travelled comedian, you ought to know that.’

‘Oh! Come off it!’ replied the ‘comedian.’ ‘Me, travelled? Oh, yes! I have travelled! But I’ve seen nothing! What can you see in a caravan?’

Meaulnes looked between the curtains with caution.

The manager was a fat bareheaded man, buried in a huge overcoat. He held in his hand a long pole hung with lanterns of many colours, and with his legs crossed he quietly watched his companion work.

As for the comedian, he had the most woeful body imaginable. Thin, tall, and shivering, with squinting greenish eyes, a moustache drooping over a toothless mouth, he called to mind the streaming face of a drowned man stretched on a slab. He was in his shirt-sleeves and his jaws chattered. He displayed in speech and gesture absolute contempt for his own person.

After a moment given to thought--both pitiful and laughable--with arms outstretched, he approached his partner and confided to him:

‘Shall I tell you what?... I can’t understand why they should have fetched rotters like us to help in such a fête! Got that, my lad?...’

Disregarding this outburst of emotion, the fat man continued to watch the work with his legs crossed, yawned, quietly sniffed, and then turning his back went away with the pole on his shoulder, saying: ‘Come on! It’s time to dress for dinner.’

The bohemian[3] followed him, but as he passed in front of the alcove:

‘Sir Sleeper!’ said he, with courtly bows and a clown’s diction, ‘it’s up to you now to wake up and dress like a marquis even though you’re only a pot-boy like me, and you will descend to the fancy-dress ball, since that is the good pleasure of these little gentlemen and of these little ladies.’

He added, in the tone of a quack at a fair, with a final bow: ‘Our friend Maloyau, of the kitchen department, will present the character of Harlequin and your humble servant that of tall Pierrot....’