Under their hypnotic gaze the woman lowered her weapon and immediately fell into a cataleptic sleep.

Her arm with the projecting steel remained horizontal.

Then Marcueil placed his forefinger between Ellen’s eyes and at once woke her, for it was time.

Who Art Thou, Human Creature?

WHO ART THOU, HUMAN CREATURE?

A miserable little tinkle, like the tip of a crutch scraping on a sidewalk; a miserable little tinkling thing, midnight, exhausted its twelve strokes in the decrepit Lurance clock tower.

This earthly sound revived Ellen, who had been beginning to doze again, this time in a natural slumber. She counted each tearful chime.

“Ha, ha, human forces!” she laughed sardonically, a bit disgruntled at’ being disturbed by so insignificant an intrusion. Then she doubled up with laughter and laughed herself back to sleep.

The door opened.

The doctor was framed in the doorway.

Bathybius stood swaying for a few seconds, benumbed by the odor of love, and blinded by the uniform whiteness of the electric lights glaring all over the immense hall, like the candles on an altar bedecked for some prodigious marriage rite.

The masked woman, her breasts erect, her fingers and toes crooked and slightly trembling, her laughter, in her sleep, turning into a very soft death rattle, lay sprawled across the bearskin. . .

The scarlet, naked, muscular, and obscene figure of the “Indian” bounded toward this clothed, hoary, and ape-bearded creature who was coming into the room without realizing what sort of a boundary he was crossing.

And the Supermale, roaring like a beast disturbed in its lair, saluted Bathybius with the same words (because there were no others to be said) with which the genie in the Thousand and One Nights greets the Vizier’s ambassador: “Who art thou, human creature?”

The galleries were swarming with people and, at the end of the farthest drawing room, tiny men, playing instruments, were chirping like crickets in a box.

And More

AND MORE

The naked, vermilioned “Indian” was carried off into the waiting throng and acclaimed as if he were a champion, an actor, or a king.

At the far end of the illuminated series of salons, bows were energetically striking strings to produce something like the Te Deum of exasperated love.

A black suit, flowering with a bed of exuberant and unkempt decorations – for, like a weed, the Agricultural Merit Medal appeared among them – hastened toward Marcueil who, secure behind his false Redskin’s epidermis, recognized Saint-Jurieu.

“Depopulation is now but an empty word,” sniveled the senator in admiration.

“Hardly even a word,” sang out the general.

“Our country can count on a hundred more defenders every day,” they all exclaimed together.

“Only eighty-two,” corrected Bathybius, stammering. “But if the ‘Indian’ deigns to take the trouble, it can be, in twenty-four hours, and only at the rate of SIX per hour: a hundred and forty-four!”

“A gross,” commented Saint-Jurieu.