Adam Gould Read Online Free PDF

comments were likely, given the vicomte’s rheumatism and hot temper. Both had been contracted in 1870 when he had fought with the Papal Zouaves to save the pope’s territory from Garibaldi. They failed, of course! An utter débâcle! While the whole Catholic world watched! Defeat had rankled and left the vicomte thin-skinned. He wouldn’t relish being made to cool his heels outside an asylum since, as he frequently put it himself, he had suffered enough affronts in his life and ‘swallowed enough toads.’ He’d surely have made his seditious comments by now. Insulted the French Republic and the government of the day. Annoyed the servants. Embarrassed everyone.
    ‘Say you couldn’t find me,’ decided Belcastel. ‘ Say I’ve gone somewhere quiet to read my office.’ He closed the wardrobe door and picked up his missal. ‘By the time you say it, it will be true.’ No point, he thought, in losing face – in so far as he had any left to lose.
    ‘He’s in a right stew.’ The man had already explained that the vicomte had climbed the gate because the porter’s delay in opening it had kept his carriage waiting. ‘Would I be right in guessing,’ he asked, ‘that he’s a military gentleman? Used to being obeyed pronto? We thought as much! Very hot under the collar he got straight off. So you can imagine what he’s like now. The porter didn’t have the key because Monsieur le Directeur is keeping it himself. He wants to make sure that none of those newspaper fellows sneak in. We tried to explain this, but Monsieur le Vicomte thought we were defying him. He called us Republican scum.’
    ‘I’m sorry about that.’
    ‘We can’t open it now anyway. Not while he’s stuck on top. Moving it will be a jerky business. The ground’s hard, you see. Frozen hard, and he might slip and fall or end up hanging from one foot. Break a leg maybe.’ Did the man’s eye have a wistful glint? ‘And if one of us went up to try pulling his foot out, we might get a kick. Or get stuck ourselves. Do you see, Monseigneur?’
    Belcastel did. ‘Ask the Irishman to deal with him,’ he advised. ‘Monsieur Gould. Tell him it’s a delicate matter and that I’d be grateful if he could help the vicomte to climb down.’
***
    A question startled Adam.
    ‘Do you know what my name means?’
    Reflections from the fire reddened Maupassant’s eyeballs, and if he had seen himself he might have screamed. His skin too was red. Adam wondered about sedation, though the patient hated it and had complained just now that the place was infested by insects armed with morphine syringes. A joke? Here in the asylum jokes rarely worked. There was no norm to bounce them off. Maybe the query about his name was a joke too?
    As it happened a similar one had come up earlier in connection with the reprinting by this morning’s
Figaro
of one of Maupassant’s stories. It had been published for the first time seven years ago and was about a killer-demon called the Horla (
hors-là
?) whose name meant ‘out there’. But what did
that
signify? Coming from a monkish writer, it might have meant ‘the world’. Or ‘death’? Dr Blanche, though, had a more comforting suggestion. The Horla, he remembered, was the name of a gas balloon which the writer had paid for, named after his story and travelled in from Paris to the Belgian coast.
    ‘At a height of 8,000 metres. So “Horla” just meant “up in the air”. It was a publicity stunt, and Maupassant had come in for a lot of teasing. People said he was trying to raise his image!’
    The reddened eyeballs were still expectantly fixed on Adam.
    ‘What does your name
mean
?’
    ‘Yes. “Mau” or “
mal
” means, of course, “pain” or “evil”. So
Mal passant
is sinister, don’t you think? A hard death perhaps? An evil passage? A bad passer-by.’
    Adam managed to laugh. ‘Why not “a passing trouble”?’ he asked bracingly. ‘Something like a cold. Or a cold sore.’ ‘Keep the laugh