Page:Stevenson - An Inland Voyage (1878).djvu/151

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Origny Sainte-Benoîte.
129

hair flourishing like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a steamhammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane: "Tristes têtes de Danois!" as Gaston Lafenestre used to say.

I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of all good fellows now gone down into the dust. We shall never again see Gaston in his forest costume—he was Gaston with all the world, in affection, not in disrespect—nor hear him wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with the woodland horn. Never again shall his kind smile put peace among all races of artistic men, and make the Englishman at home in France. Never more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent at heart than he, sit all un-