MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[0435] I have not been able to find out why Sapo was not expelled.
[0436] I shall have to leave this question open. [0437] I try not to be glad.
[0438] I shall make haste to put a safe remove between him and this incom-
prehensible indulgence, I shall make him live as though he had been
punished according to his deserts.

[0439] We shall turn our backs on this
little cloud, but we shall not let it out of our sight. [0440] It will
not cover the sky without our knowing, we shall not suddenly raise
our eyes, far from help, far from shelter, to a sky as black as
ink. [0441] That is what I have decided. [0442] I see no other solution. [0443] It is
the best I can do.

[0444] At the age of fourteen he was a plump rosy boy. [0445] His wrists and
ankles were thick, which made his mother say that one day he would
be evebⁿ bigger than his father. [0446] Curious deduction. [0447] But the most
striking thing about him was his big round head horrid with flaxen
hair as stiff and straight as the bristles of a brush. [0448] Even his
teachers could not help thinking he had a remarkable head and they
were all the more irked by their failure to get anything into it.

[0449] His father would say, when he was^[₰] in good humour, One of these days
he will astonish us all. [0450] It was thanks to Sapo's skull that he
was able ^enabled to hazard this opinion and, in defiance of the facts and
against his better judgement, to revert to it from time to time.
[0451] But he could not endure the look in Sapo's eyes and went out of
his way not to meet it. [0452] He has your eyes, his wife would say.
[0453] Then Mr Saposcat chafed to be alone, in order to inspect his eyes
in the mirror. [0454] They were palest blue. [0455] Just a shade lighter, said