(Le Triboulet, Paris, 1884)
You didn’t count on me, wretch!
You thought you might be able to take a break in Algeria?
Would you like to leave Italy soon!
Finally! (What the Panama Vermouth pursuing the cholera figure is meant to signal is not entirely clear to me, but at the height of French attempts to dig a canal through Panama, huge quantities of quinine were consumed to fight tropical diseases, and it was common to dissolve sulphate of quinine in vermouth for consumption every morning before breakfast.)
He followed him fifteen paces behind…
Come on, outside!
Beware of the grapeshot!
More often than you will stop in China to poison our soldiers!
(The “anticholera Panama Vermouth” would appear to confirm the assumption above.)
Come on, let’s get away!…
And faster than that!
They were frantic races
from Timbuktu to Kamchatka…
…describing rapid circles around the globe…
“What the hell! Chasing me even to Paris! I’ll just have to go to the New World.”
“Where I will join you, rascal!”
…and inexorably pursued by his powerful enemy.
Sic Transit Pestilentia 