OU_214051 UNIVERSA - Osmania University

THE LODGER 121
" Mo9t likely she's trying to get some money through to him,"
someone observed.
That was so, and though constantly rebuffed, she kept on trying.
She even appealed for help to one of the pressmen.
" You'll be in the front row, won't you, when they're marched
on board? Do please slip this into his hand as he goes by."
She couldn't understand why they always refused, and her look
conveyed what she thought of diem. One morning she even buttonholed
the governor of the Saint-Martin penitentiary, in the main
street of the town. He took off his hat politely when she came up
to him, but no sooner had she started to explain than, taking off
his hat again, he walked away.
Even so she did not lose heart. She harried people with questions,
as if they had nothing else to do than to give her information.
" Tell me, please! Which road do they go down? Where are
the public allowed to stand? "
She was told that windows overlooking the route taken by the
prisoners could be rented, and she paid for one. But on learning
that the Venetian shutters had to be kept closed when the men were
passing, she returned to the house and insisted on having her money
back.
Two smartly dressed men who had been hovering in the background
promptly came forward and rented the window she had
given up. One of them, she learnt, was a brothel-keeper from
Marseilles, the other the brother of a man under sentence of
transportation.
Everyone knew everybody else by sight, as they passed each
other ten or a dozen times a day on the water-front. On the last
morning, however, there was a new-comer—a woman in black
who landed from the La Rochelle ferry-boat, and looked about her
with a bewildered air.
" Is this where the convicts go on board? " she asked the first
person she met. " They haven't embarked yet, have they? "
By way of luggage she had only a handbag, and she carried it
about with her all the morning. When the clock struck twelve she
seated herself on the sea-wall, opened the bag and took out some
food.
Elie's sister walked past her once or twice, and gave her a long
look each time.
Meanwhile the prisoners were being lined up in the jail courtyard
for the final roll-call. The prison buildings were built of the velvety