“Don’t worry, he’s imagining your little mug and beating his meat.”

Bulkaen seemed not to have heard this comment.

He said to me: “Good night, Jean.” When he finished, his voice was prolonged by a kind of chant. It was a cry from another window:

“Boys, this is Roland talking! They let me have it! Hard labour for life. So long, boys! I’m pushing off tomorrow for Melun! So long!”

The silence closed again over the last word. All the beauty of the evening and of Bulkaen’s cry will be contained in that child’s noble farewell to his life. Though the windows are shut, the waves he whips up will transmit his peaceful sadness to the depths of our sleep. It is the commentary on Bulkaen’s cry of greeting. . . . “So long, boys, I’m pushing off tomorrow. . . .” The simplest—the reader knows what I mean by simple—the simplest of us is praying. It is an orison, the state that makes you forgive, since it leaves you powerless when confronted with the greatest crimes, that is, men’s judgements, for that is why it was granted us that evening to hear the very voice of afflicted love. I then had to take a piss. Suddenly I was flooded with the complete memory of so full a day, and I had to hold my prick with both hands for it was too heavy. Bulkaen! Bulkaen! The name enchanted me, though I still didn’t know his given name. Will he love me? I remembered his mean look and his ever so gentle look, and his shifting from one to the other when he looked at me was so frightening that, in order to escape the fear, my body found nothing better to do than sink into sleep.

Harcamone was given a life sentence after his fourth theft.

I cannot tell exactly how the idea of death occurred to him. I can only invent it. But I know him so well that I am likely to be right. I myself knew the tremendous despair of a life sentence, and it was even worse that morning, for I had the feeling that I was being damned forever.