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Chapter 4. The Counter-Pain. Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found

Quiquex's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You'd have almost

thought I'd been his wife. The counter-pain was of patchwork full of odd little party-colored

squares and triangles. And this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable

cretin' labyrinth of a figure. No two parts of which were of one precise shade.

Owing, I suppose, to his keeping his arm at sea, unmethodically in sun and shade, his

shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times. This same arm of his, I say, looked

for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt.

Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it from

the quilt. They so blended their hues together. And it was only by the sense of weight and

pressure that I could tell that Quiquex was hugging me.

My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, I well remember

a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me. Whether it was a reality or a dream, I

never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some

caper or other, I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little

sweep-do a few days previous. And my stepmother, who somehow or other, was all the time whipping

...