At nightfall, overwhelmed by so many emotions, he again suffered the
torments of hunger. All day long he had eaten nothing but the crust of
bread found in the kitchen by the Warden's wife. The rest he had left
for her and her daughter. A distress as harrowing to him as his hunger
was the sight of poor Georgette's shocked despondency. She was always
trying to escape from his presence in an agony of shame.
"Don't let the Master see me!" she would cry, hiding her face. Since
his presence seemed to recall more vividly the memory of her assaults,
Desnoyers tried, while in the lodge, to avoid going near her.
Desperate with the gnawings of his empty stomach, he accosted several
doctors who were speaking French, but all in vain. They would not listen
to him, and when he repeated his petitions they pushed him roughly out
of their way. . . . He was not going to perish with hunger in the midst
of his riches! Those people were eating; the indifferent nurses had
established themselves in his kitchen. . . . But the time passed
on without encountering anybody who would take pity on this old man
dragging himself weakly from one place to another, in the misery of an
old age intensified by despair, and suffering in every part of the body,
the results of the blows of the night before. He now knew the gnawings
of a hunger far worse than that which he had suffered when journeying
over the desert plains--a hunger among men, in a civilized country,
wearing a belt filled with gold, surrounded with towers and castle halls
which were his, but in the control of others who would not condescend
to listen to him.
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