doing it, all!—and after a slight pause he added in a more tremulous and louder voice—all! I've done it. Then some panting, a few seconds of silence—during which I asked myself what Guillaume had done—and he added with ineffable satisfaction:
Ah! futtering is after all the only thing worth living for in this world.
Mow those words impressed me. I repeated them over and over to myself, and for days afterwards they kept ever ringing in my ears.
I had found out what Guillaume and the nurse were doing. They were futtering.
Yes, but what was futtering?
I had often heard common people use the word foutre, either when they were much astonished or very angry. I knew it was a trivial word. I likewise had heard an idiot called a foutre or a Jean foutre, that likewise was low. Moreover a man that was dead or done for, was said to be foutu. To futter some one was—I had hitherto believed—to thrash a person. How could it then follow that "futtering was the only thing worth living for?"
129
