On the carpet the laths of the shutters projected their lines. Here was a den! A gypsy lair! Here and there, clothes on the ground. A plate with scraps, and near it a piece of filth. One would have said it was a hermit’s haunt. Ah! and what was that which moved on the bed? There he is, the recluse! It’s a man! He was lying face downwards amongst the disorder of the bolster and the quilt, with his head leaning on his arms. He had on only a nightshirt and trousers. His beard was of several weeks’ growth, and, like his hair, which was rather short, was almost of a whitish-yellow. Ever since that cry the other night, my head had been full of whimsies. No, I had never seen that puffy, dirty face--that podgy body. His eyes seemed kindly enough--stupid, but good and endearing. Um! What a curious indifference in his face! He must be a lazy chap, though. The prisoner was snoozing, badly, it seemed. The flies were annoying him. He drives them away with a sudden clumsy gesture of his hand. His indolent eye follows their flight between his snoozes, and sometimes, seized with a fit of anger, and making his lips smack together with a sudden movement of his head, he tries to snap up the insects that irritate him so as they pass by. The madman! There is a madman in my uncle’s house!! Who could he be? My eyelids touched the keyhole. My eye became frozen. The other one, taking its turn of duty, is rather short-sighted. I saw very badly. My line of sight was rather narrow. Good God! I have hit the door and made a noise. The madman has jumped up! How small he is! Hallo! here he is coming towards me! Suppose I were to open the door? Ah! Now he is throwing himself on the floor and sniffing and growling. Poor fellow! It is a sad sight. He had guessed nothing. Crouching in the track of the sunray, and all striped with the shadow of the shutters, I could more easily examine him. His hands and face were spotted with little rosy stains, like old scratches. One would have said that he had been fighting. Ah! but this is graver. A long purple scar goes under his hair, from one temple to the other, round the back of his head. It is very likely the scar of a wound. The poor fellow has been ill-treated. Lerne has made him undergo some horrible treatment, or he is wreaking some vengeance on him. Oh! the brute!