his blouse as stiff as a lump of iron ore. I leave them, and go alone
into Brisbille's.

The smithy hearth befires a workshop which bristles with black objects.
In the middle of the dark bodies of implements hanging from walls and
ceiling is the metallic Brisbille, with leaden hands, his dark apron
rainbowed with file-dust,--dirty on principle, because of his ideas,
this being Sunday. He is sober, and his face still unkindled, but he
is waiting impatiently for the church-going bell to begin, so that he
may go and drink, in complete solitude.

Through an open square, in the ponderous and dirt-shaggy glazing of the
smithy, one can see a portion of the street, and a sketch, in bright
and airy tones, of scattered people. It is like the sharply cut field
of vision in an opera-glass, in which figures are drawn and shaded, and
cross each other; where one makes out, at times, a hat bound and
befeathered, swaying as it goes; a little boy with sky-blue tie and
buttoned boots, and tubular knickers hanging round his thin, bare
calves; a couple of gossiping dames in swollen and somber petticoats,
who tack hither and thither, meet, are mutually attracted and dissolve
in conversation, like rolling drops of ink. In the foreground of this
colored cinema which goes by and passes again, Brisbille, the sinister,
is ranting away, as always. He is red and lurid, spotted with
freckles, his hair greasy, his voice husky. For a moment, while he
paces to and fro in his cage, dragging shapeless and gaping shoes
behind him, he speaks to me in a low voice, and close to my face, in
gusts. Brisbille can shout, but not talk; there must be a definite
pressure of anger before his resounding huskiness issues from his
throat.