As a rule these tactics make the questioner
proceed to ask, "Why, what are you thinking about?" But my father,
inquisitive, annoyed, and cruel, repeated: "Have you friends, then, in
that neighbourhood, that you know Balbec so well?"
In a final and desperate effort the smiling gaze of Legrandin struggled to
the extreme limits of its tenderness, vagueness, candour, and distraction;
then feeling, no doubt, that there was nothing left for it now but to
answer, he said to us: "I have friends all the world over, wherever there
are companies of trees, stricken but not defeated, which have come
together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic obstinacy, to an
inclement sky which has no mercy upon them."
"That is not quite what I meant," interrupted my father, obstinate as a
tree and merciless as the sky. "I asked you, in case anything should
happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all
alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any of the
people."
"There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one," replied
Legrandin, who was by no means ready yet to surrender; "places I know
well, people very slightly.
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