NPPF Canto 4 - Our Cream

[Terrance]

> 
> John Shade is a versipellis. The Cream is an ointment used in the
> transformation from man to beast. It makes those hairs stand on end.  Nature
> is glued to him.

And now there rolls in, as on casters, a character, 
waxlike. lean-loined, with red nostrils soot-stufed, 
and I sit and cannot decide: is it human
or nothing special--garrulous dust? 

Like a blustering beggar, the pest of the poorhouse, 
like an evil schoolmate, like the head spy
(in that thick slurred murmur: "Say, what were you doing
in such and such a place?"), like a dream, 

like a spy, like a hangman, like an evil old schoolmate