It seems as if real suffering is giving voice through him with a beast's cry.
When he has spoken, he collapses on to a stone.

With his fist, whose leather is covered with red hair, like a cow's, he hides the squalid face that looks as if it had been spat upon.

"Folks aren't wicked," he says, "but they're stupid, stupid, stupid." And Brisbille cries.
Just then Father Piot advances into the space, with his silver aureole, his benevolent smile, and the vague and continuous lisping which trickles from his lips.

He stops in the middle of us, gives a nod to each one and continuing his ingenuous reflections aloud, he murmurs, "Hem, hem! The most important thing of all, in war, is the return to religious ideas.

Hem!" The monstrous calm of the saying makes me start, and communicates final agitation to Brisbille.