La Pérouse

La Pérouse is the commander of a ghostly gathering in Ferdinand Bardamu’s vision of the dead above the city. His backward wooden leg and missing spyglass delay his departure until the stroke of four; once astride, he leads the assembled phantoms into a vast rush across the sky, where the dead of successive centuries pursue and challenge one another. The scene gives a remembered figure a brief, commanding role in a nocturnal procession that makes the past visible but not still.

Identity and Appearance

Bardamu recognizes La Pérouse among the dead gathering overhead and identifies him as La Pérouse of the Islands. The former adventurer is presented not as a living companion but as a ghostly commander: the other phantoms wait for him to get ready, and the gathering’s movement depends on his taking the lead.

His appearance carries the marks of an imperfect return. He has a wooden leg, which he puts on backward, and he cannot find his large spyglass. Neither detail is incidental to the scene’s action: his difficulty preparing delays the assembly, while the spyglass is so important to him that he refuses to leave the clouds without it.

The Delayed Departure

The ghosts wait while La Pérouse struggles with the leg and searches for the missing instrument. His insistence on having the spyglass around his neck prolongs the preparation, even as the hour advances. The object belongs to his remembered adventures, but here it also becomes a condition of his participation in the procession.

At last, the others hoist him up at the final stroke of four and strap him to the saddle. He is still waving and gesticulating as he settles himself and buttons his coat; the clock’s striking nearly unbalances him. The scene makes his authority vivid without making him effortless: the leader of the rush is first a cumbersome figure who must be helped into place.

Commander of the Phantoms

Once mounted, La Pérouse leads the dead across the sky. The phantoms twist and turn, pursuing, challenging, and charging one another in a struggle between centuries. Their movement fills the northern horizon with an immense, disorderly melee before day breaks through the rent they have made in the night.

The vision places La Pérouse among other dead figures Bardamu has recognized, including former patients and people encountered in earlier parts of his life. Yet La Pérouse is distinct in this gathering because he directs its movement. His command does not settle the conflict: it sets the phantoms in motion, and the sky becomes the stage for battles that continue across historical eras.

Narrative Role and Significance

La Pérouse’s episode transforms recollection into a crowded procession rather than a calm inventory of the dead. His backward leg, missing spyglass, and delayed mounting give the vision particular, almost procedural detail; then the clock strikes four, and the gathering erupts into motion. The shift from preparation to a sky-wide rush makes the scene’s scale feel both comic and disturbing.

The spyglass links the dead commander to the distant things and adventures of his remembered life, while the phantom melee draws those individual memories into a larger vision of recurring conflict. La Pérouse can lead the dead, but he cannot bring their centuries of antagonism to an end. As dawn rises through the opening in the night, the procession’s passage remains an image of history in motion, not a resolution.