He sat there, plump, with protuberant eyes, bubbling with harmless feminine jokes. ‘It was taken years ago.’ ‘He looks like all the rest,’ the lieutenant said. It was obscure, but you could read into the smudgy photograph a well-shaved, well-powdered jowl much too developed for his age. The good things of life had come to him too early—the respect of his contemporaries, a safe livelihood. The trite religious word upon the tongue, the joke to ease the way, the ready acceptance of other people’s homage … a happy man. A natural hatred as between dog and dog stirred in the lieutenant’s bowels.
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