Unnamed French Architect

The architect who designs the mansion and grounds at Sutpen's Hundred is identified in Absalom! as "French," but in this novel he comes to Yoknapatawpha from the French Caribbean: "all the way from Martinique" (26). When he is mentioned again in Requiem for a Nun he is identified as the "tame Parisian architect" (30). The description of him in that novel - a small man "with humorous sardonic undefeated eyes which had seen everything and believed none of it" (30) - also fits the character who appears in Absalom! In the earlier text he tries to run away from Sutpen but is "hunted down and caught in turn by the negroes" - i.e. Sutpen's slaves (10).