Quotation from: The Arrow of Gold

Written by: Joseph Conrad


I reflected rapidly that if I knocked him over, chair and all, by a
sudden blow from the shoulder it would bring about infinite
complications beginning with a visit to the Commissaire de Police
on night-duty, and ending in God knows what scandal and disclosures
of political kind; because there was no telling what, or how much,
this outrageous brute might choose to say and how many people he
might not involve in a most undesirable publicity. He was smoking
his cigar with a poignantly mocking air and not even looking at me.
One can't hit like that a man who isn't even looking at one; and
then, just as I was looking at him swinging his leg with a caustic
smile and stony eyes, I felt sorry for the creature. It was only
his body that was there in that chair. It was manifest to me that
his soul was absent in some hell of its own. At that moment I
attained the knowledge of who it was I had before me. This was the
man of whom both Dona Rita and Rose were so much afraid. It
remained then for me to look after him for the night and then
arrange with Baron H. that he should be sent away the very next
day--and anywhere but to Tolosa. Yes, evidently, I mustn't lose
sight of him. I proposed in the calmest tone that we should go on
where he could get his much-needed rest. He rose with alacrity,
picked up his little hand-bag, and, walking out before me, no doubt
looked a very ordinary person to all eyes but mine. It was then
past eleven, not much, because we had not been in that restaurant
quite an hour, but the routine of the town's night-life being upset
during the Carnival the usual row of fiacres outside the Maison
Doree was not there; in fact, there were very few carriages about.
Perhaps the coachmen had assumed Pierrot costumes and were rushing
about the streets on foot yelling with the rest of the population.
"We will have to walk," I said after a while.--"Oh, yes, let us
walk," assented Senor Ortega, "or I will be frozen here." It was
like a plaint of unutterable wretchedness. I had a fancy that all
his natural heat had abandoned his limbs and gone to his brain. It
was otherwise with me; my head was cool but I didn't find the night
really so very cold. We stepped out briskly side by side. My
lucid thinking was, as it were, enveloped by the wide shouting of
the consecrated Carnival gaiety. I have heard many noises since,
but nothing that gave me such an intimate impression of the savage
instincts hidden in the breast of mankind; these yells of festivity
suggested agonizing fear, rage of murder, ferocity of lust, and the
irremediable joylessness of human condition: yet they were emitted
by people who were convinced that they were amusing themselves
supremely, traditionally, with the sanction of ages, with the
approval of their conscience--and no mistake about it whatever!
Our appearance, the soberness of our gait made us conspicuous.
Once or twice, by common inspiration, masks rushed forward and
forming a circle danced round us uttering discordant shouts of
derision; for we were an outrage to the peculiar proprieties of the
hour, and besides we were obviously lonely and defenceless. On
those occasions there was nothing for it but to stand still till
the flurry was over. My companion, however, would stamp his feet
with rage, and I must admit that I myself regretted not having
provided for our wearing a couple of false noses, which would have
been enough to placate the just resentment of those people. We
might have also joined in the dance, but for some reason or other
it didn't occur to us; and I heard once a high, clear woman's voice
stigmatizing us for a "species of swelled heads" (espece d'enfles).
We proceeded sedately, my companion muttered with rage, and I was
able to resume my thinking. It was based on the deep persuasion
that the man at my side was insane with quite another than
Carnivalesque lunacy which comes on at one stated time of the year.
He was fundamentally mad, though not perhaps completely; which of
course made him all the greater, I won't say danger but, nuisance.

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