ON Monday evening, after dinner, the company went to the drawing-room to take coffee.

ZozÉ was christening a pale blue muslin dress, the low cut of which revealed her neck, encircled with a double row of pearls. The Marquis was in evening dress and white bow; Gerald, in a dinner-jacket, wore a tea rose in his button-hole. An air of festivity seemed to emanate from them both.

The tall French windows of the room were opened; they led straight out onto the terrace that surrounded the house. Through the space between their two sides could be seen the lawn, the flower beds and the thick mass of the trees of the park. The day was, as it were, retiring with regret. Its lingering gray light seemed to dispute with the night, in the air, over the warm charm of the end of the evening.

“A beautiful evening!” said M. de Meuze, who was smoking a cigar on the balcony.

Seated at the back of the drawing-room, facing the window, M. Raindal was reading the paper near a lamp. Mme. Chambannes and Gerald were chatting in the left-hand corner, on a little cretonne divan. Aunt Panhias passed the coffee cups, grumbling the while against her husband who had insisted on staying until after dessert. Had anyone ever heard of such absurd stubbornness! When one had to meet somebody, was it not the least one could do to give up his dessert? And she pestered ZozÉ to find out about the hour of the trains, calculate the delays due to transfers and decide whether Uncle Panhias would arrive on time.

M. de Meuze came in again and interrupted her complaints.

“Please excuse me, ladies,” he said. “The journey has tired me out.... I am going to put my old body to bed!”

He went towards M. Raindal to shake hands with him.

“Hush!” he whispered, turning back to the young people. “Science is asleep.... Peace to his rest!... Good night, dear madame!”

ZozÉ gave him a friendly nod.

“Oh, tha nothing!” Aunt Panhias declared, in a hushed voice. “Our good M. Raindal is caught with that almost every night!”

She went out with the Marquis, having a score of orders to give for the comfort of the new guests, for Chambannes’ return, and for the dispatching of the carriage.

“Alone at last!” Gerald murmured softly, in a tone of banter.

“Not so loud, my darling!” implored ZozÉ, as she pressed his hand.

“Why?... He is asleep!”

ZozÉ, without releasing the hand of her Raldo, frowned as she examined M. Raindal. Then she rose and pulled the young man after her.

“Come! Let us go on the terrace.... I shall feel safer.”

Then she sighed: “Oh! my own Raldo! What a bore that he stayed!... And you know.... We have him here for another fortnight!”

“Yes, you told me! Well! If he is in our way, wl lead him a chase, the old kangaroo!... It ca be very hard to do that.”

They were leaning on the white stone balustrade. With extreme caution, M. Raindal opened his eyes. From where he was, he had only a side view of Mme. Chambannes, her vase-like pale blue dress, her fine profile turned to the right.... That was so, no doubt, because she was speaking to Gerald whom he guessed was very close to her, elbow to elbow, as he himself had leaned over, up above, in the lighted room, on the day of his arrival! He held his breath back in order to try to hear them. He could distinguish nothing but a gentle melody of confused voices, a cascade of softened syllables, whose meaning was broken by the invisible partitions of the air.

At times, the young woma profile shook or plunged into the darkness. The conversation was cut short by a dead stop. M. Raindal, his hands stuck to his armchair, contemplated with a feeling of distress the pale dress, the headless trunk of his little pupil. Why did she bend so? For what mystery did she incline her whispering, laughing lips?

Suddenly, a tall shadow passed behind Mme. Chambannes; Geral silhouette, even his rose and his moustache showing distinctly. Nimble steps went down the front steps. The pebbles of the paths in the garden squeaked. Now, there came, at intervals, a low voice in a monologue. Her head immobile, Mme. Chambannes seemed to listen to him; her finger before her face made gestures of refusal.

Forgetting all caution, M. Raindal opened his eyes very wide. Zoz brusquely turning about caused him to close them again, but barely in time. What was happening? She came into the drawing-room, looked for something—hearing a rustling of silk and lace, M. Raindal assumed that it was a scarf—then went out again on tip-toes, turning round an instant as she reached the French windows.... Then he heard her heels on the steps and on the gravel of the path.

“This is going rather far!” the master murmured, as he rose and stretched himself.

He listened. Everything was silent outside. Where had she run away? Yes, to the garden, to walk with young Gerald.... But if they were walking, how could he explain the silence? Had they, by any chance, gone beyond the customary limit, as far as the lawn, perhaps even beyond that? An unlikely liberty! Yet M. Raindal wanted to make sure of it. In his turn he came to lean on the white stone balustrade. In disorderly bounds his heart beat against his ribs, and this continuous hammering extended to his left arm like a hollow internal alarm-bell. His eyes scanned the garden.

The silence persisted under a sky covered with stars. A faint bluish light revealed every part where bushes, trees or other opaque obstacles had not resisted their fragile rays. Thus, the lawn showed in all its outlines, even to its slight slope and the flower beds. The path that edged it also sketched out clearly its coils of gravel. The darkness began only beyond that path, at the high wall of the lime trees, which scattered the perfume of their late blooms far through the damp atmosphere.

As a rule, M. Raindal delighted in that sugary perfume. He would inhale it greedily with mouth wide open and nostrils palpitating. But now, all his body, with the exception of his eyes, was petrified with anguish. He had no strength, no life, no consciousness but for the one aim, to scan the shadows, to search the darkness with his greedy eyes, his eyes that longed to see.

No one on the lawn; no one in the path ... not a sound on the gravel! Then they were hiding in the park, the wretches!

The master took no time to answer this terrible query. He straightened himself brusquely; like an automaton, whose very stiffness is unsteady, he went down the steps.

In two strides he was on the lawn; the soft earth deadened the sound of his feet. He gave a sardonic chuckle, a kind of victorious cough. At least, moving this way, on this soft ground, he would not be heard coming.... Oh!... Where was he going in his infatuated march? What could he do, or say, what could he imagine, in case he were to meet them at the turning of a path? He had scarcely thought of that; a savage sorrow was burning him, ceaselessly, and urged him forward like an animal maddened by fire. He felt nothing, neither the perfume of the lime-trees, nor the freshness of the grass which wet his ankles, nor the hateful aspect of his own pursuit, the shamefulness of his cunning! He was approaching ... he reached the park, he was going to see!

He ventured into the thickest part of the wood. The carpet of dead leaves exhaled slowly towards him its pungent odor of eternal and ever renewed decay. Supple branches cut his face. Roots rose under his feet. He went on, his eyes half closed for fear of thorns; perspiration dripped from his forehead; his hands were stretched forward to feel his way through the darkness and foliage.

He stopped suddenly. From the left, from the place where he thought were the glade of the lime-trees, the spaced trees, the mushroom-like stone table and the wicker chairs, a murmur arose, a sort of duet of violent and languorous voices. They ceased an instant, then renewed their murmur. He had an impression that his heart was shrinking, vanishing out of his body. He paused a minute, because his legs gave way under him.... Then he took up his march again, panting, bent in two like a gorilla, his hands almost touching the ground. As he crawled nearer, the voices became more distinct. Suddenly, he almost fainted. Now he perceived everything, even the familiar sound of those voices. It was an exchange of invocations so shameless, of apostrophes at once so bestial and so tender that he was utterly stupefied. Ah! only Queen Cleopatra, perhaps, could have ever fallen to that depth of shamelessness!... M. Raindal did not have the courage to look, to see. A panicky rage swept him away. He felt a frantic need to run, to escape the tortures of that infernal wood. He rushed out in a mad, furious race, now fearless of making a noise, not caring whether he betrayed himself or not, smashing the branches that stood in his way, taking his revenge on the bushes, sweating, galloping with the noise of big game running under wood before the dogs. Out of breath, he stumbled onto the lawn, and the dahlias received him. He rose quickly, his knees heavy with damp earth. He took up his march again, at a more moderate pace but yet hastily.

He did not run but his legs nervously set a fast pace, finding relief in that hurried gait. When he reached the steps, he brushed his clothes with his sleeve, instinctively. A remnant of clear sight made him dread Aunt Panhias, her curiosity and possible inquiries. The drawing-room, however, proved to be still empty. The master rushed to the hall and swiftly climbed the stairs.... At last he was in his room. With a far resounding kick he closed his door. His trembling hand turned the key twice in the keyhole. He fell, exhausted, on the edge of his big bed, which had already been prepared for the night.

His lassitude did not calm him. A boiling anger surged in his veins. His hands made gestures of destruction. He would have liked to hold Mme. Chambannes, to break her as he had the branches in her park, to crush and annihilate her.

His little pupil! His little pupil! Was it she? Was it those candid lips that had uttered such abominable words. At the memory of each word, he felt a new blade piercing his heart.... No! his judgment was prejudiced and rebelled against so much infamy; his memory must be lying!... His little pupil!... His dear friend! Simultaneously, he united the basest insults with these terms of endearment. He evoked ThÉrÈse, recalling to his mind her hatred for ZozÉ, and wishing that she were near him now so that they could hate the guilty one together.

Ah! ThÉrÈse had not been wrong about the shallowness of this Mme. Chambannes, her depravity and her mediocrity. In one meeting, she had appreciated her better, fathomed her and sentenced her more accurately than he had done in a hundred meetings. For she, ThÉrÈse, did not love her, while he, alas did!

“Yes! I loved her; I love her still!” he murmured fervently, as if to deny in that remorseful admission all the puny disguises, all the artifices of prudery which had sheltered a passion that was without courage.

The sound of shutters being closed and footsteps coming up interrupted his meditations. He hoped that Mme. Chambannes would come in to ask him how he was. What should he say in reply? Should he fall at her knees, pitifully stammering words of love? Or should he repulse her with a scornful reply?

He did not have to choose, because ZozÉ did not come to him. Instead of her coming, the echoes of the park took up once more in the mind of the master their vile, diabolical concert, the duet of their ravished accents.

Oh! what atrocious, what repugnant words! M. Raindal compared them with the Latin footnotes of his book. At a distance of twenty centuries, they were almost the same words, the same follies as those which Cleopatra, in her worst ecstasies had stimulated in her lover, Antony the rough soldier! By means of what miracle of universal and immutable perversity had this infamous vocabulary been shamefully transmitted from the Queen of Egypt to the maste little friend? How many amorous couples must have repeated and preserved it, from generation to generation!

Then, suddenly, a clear intuition rose through the discard of those historical parallels. M. Raindal understood; he explained to himself at last the work of his little pupil ... his professor rather, his little teacher who had, from the first day, little by little, taught him the meaning of a refined existence, material enjoyment, the tangible reality of all those terms which he had in the past carelessly used in the written sentences of his books, as the symbolical pieces of a lifeless chessboard!... Pleasure, love, luxury, elegance, ardor of the senses, beauty, grace, passion, tenderness—these had been to him as so many inert syllables, until Mme. Chambannes brought them to life for him.

And the last lesson, the end of this apprenticeship—had it not been completed just now, out there among the high trees where, perhaps, she might still be, enraptured, and forgetting him in the arms of another man!...

The hitherto unknown torture with which this vision inflicted him brought an exclamation of horror to his lips. He rose from his bed, blinking. He beat the air with his fists in a sudden threat. For a few minutes, he lost the thread of his meditations.

He crumbled down, quite exhausted, in a cretonne armchair; in his mind he was living again his whole career, the succession of those virtuous years whose righteousness had once exalted his pride. How dull and trivial that narrow little path which he had walked at the cost of so much hardship and so many efforts seemed now! It reminded him of one of those out of the way side-paths which one walked, on holidays, to avoid the joy of others.... Near that vision, he dimly perceived, as in an ancient print, the noisy kermesse of Life, singing groups, bouquets, drunken orgies, women with men, the furious exuberance of the mob of revelry.... Meanwhile he was pursuing, apart, his own road and that step by step, seeing only the next da march when one was completed, applying his efforts merely not to deviate from this path, his zeal not to be diverted.... What cared he whether they enjoyed themselves and lived on the other side? Was he not aware with scientific certainty how vain and vulgar were the pleasures which satisfy the mob? Did he not know that they left nothing but disgust behind them, to what sottishness they brought one down, and finally what a very small thing was Woman (mulier) in comparison with a superior mind?...

Woman—he had really known but one, his own. Apart from a few indiscretions during his life as a student, indiscretions that were forgotten as soon as committed, he remembered his life as a young man, his four years spent in the desert under Mariette Bey, his imperturbable chastity, that precocious contempt for love which caused even the “Great Bey” to tease him. When his comrades left the cantonment and went to the nearest town to see the dancing Bayaderes or spend a nigh leave with some native girl, M. Raindal had, as a rule, discovered some pretext not to join them, some special work to be finished, a papyrus to be deciphered or a sudden indisposition. “Sapristi! Raindal, you must rub the rust off yourself, my dear fellow!” the Great Bey declared, in that sarcastic voice of his. “You will end by making us believe that you have a liaison with a mummy!” The young savant would laugh, promise to follow his companions, but recant at the last minute. The Bayaderes bored him. Since then, apart from his wife, no one! Not one adventure, not one memory, no graceful image, none of those dear phantoms whose one particular beauty—her hands, her smile, her finesse in love-making or the sweetness of her eyes—flatters one, with its secret companionship, till death.

Here he was now, hoary and disfigured by age, unable to attract anyone, panting with love at the time when pleasure should be given up, enamored of a young woman who loved another! What a punishment! What agony! How long would it last? How long would it remain to show him the joys he had missed, thanks to pedantic vainglory and proud self-confidence?

He walked to the chimney. Standing before the mirror, he twisted his features in stranger grimaces to convince himself even more that his decrepitude was beyond hope. Ah! yes indeed, he had a pretty complexion, fine teeth and wrinkles, puffed skin and a nice flabby face, everything in short which he needed to seduce a young woman!

The wheels of a carriage crunched the gravel of the path. He heard voices raised in appeals and much laughter. George had arrived.

M. Raindal had a sudden desire to go down. He would allege the return of Chambannes and the wish to welcome his host; then he could see ZozÉ once more. His hand was on the handle of the door, but a scruple of pride kept him back. No, that would be too cowardly! He stayed upstairs.

He heard doors being closed. Silence again fell over the house. M. Raindal felt as if his heart had been stabbed again. He was thinking about the husband who was with his wife now.... His shoulders shook in a nasty sneer. Phew! he was not jealous of that unfortunate Chambannes! Really, there was nothing to envy him for! To be the husband of a brainless little fool, a worthless creature who, a minute ago.... He did not finish his thought. His eyes were bloodshot; brutal curses rushed to his lips; he was choking. M. Raindal opened the window.

The night was cooler. On the distant plain, trains passed at intervals, winding their coils of yellow lights on the horizon. Some roosters in the neighborhood, deceived by the false paleness of the sky, sent to each other, through space, their dauntless greetings, to which dogs howled in reply.

M. Raindal gravely contemplated the blue stars. Each was to him a sun with satellites gravitating round it. He asked himself how many sorrows, identical with his own, must be making men moan at that same moment, on those obscure planets. He reasoned, made calculations, intoxicating himself with lofty thoughts. He invoked Human Sorrow, the Sufferings of the Worlds, the Universal Complaint—the conventional pity, the lip-charity, the egotistic and hypocritically tender hygiene, all the declamatory remedies which books teach to alleviate personal sorrows. But he derived no solace from them.

Poor thinker, poor master, poor Man! Yes, he could indeed call to his help the spectacle of the heavens, the astronomers and the philosophers; he could call on Newton, Laplace, Kant and Hegel! He could swell himself up and make himself feel greater!

The fact remained that he still harbored within his own breast an atom of flesh which was more sensitive and real than all those vaunted infinites which were powerless alike to cure him and to dominate him.

What was there left to him in this overwhelming catastrophe? His family? He had, in the last year, lost even the desire to cherish them. His work? He hated the results of it, its lying mirage, its evil routine.

He closed the window, renouncing the stars. He sat on his bed once more and began to cry.

Ended were his illusions! Gone his old ma fatuity! He would leave the next day. He would not be a witness of their humiliating amours. Never again would he see his dear little pupil. And he wept.... It was at last a sincere sorrow, without evil spite, without any parody of vanity, a humble sorrow which acknowledged itself and loved its tears! In this M. Raindal found peace and finally sleep.

On the morrow, however, when he went down to the garden about ten lock, a sudden commotion reopened his secret wound.

“Yes, monsieur, madame has gone out,” Firmin assured him. “She has gone out for a drive with M. de Meuze.”

“Which one?” M. Raindal almost shouted.

“With M. le Marquis.... M. le Comte and monsieur are still in their rooms.”

“Ah! very good!” M. Raindal said, recovering his ease.

He sat in a rocking-chair, in the shadow of the terrace and affected to be engrossed in reading the paper.

But his set eyes were not on the lines. An internal passion was following other ideas, other words, the little parting speech, a few mysterious and firm sentences in which he would announce his intention to leave. He had mastered the greater part of it when the close-cut mane of Notpou emerged from between the trees.

From the carriage, the Marquis gave a cordial salute to M. Raindal. Oh! there had been no delay! no hesitation! The master was thoroughly ousted, deprived of his power! Even Geral father, this old marquis, had taken his little pupil away from him; even of him he felt jealous! Go! He must go as soon as possible! His own suffering necessitated this prompt sacrifice.

The master rose to his feet. He was watching for Mme. Chambannes’ first glance, for her fatigued expression and the lowering of her eyes with which she would undoubtedly greet him. Zoz physiognomy disappointed him. She walked up to him, smiling as usual, her eyes free and easy under her veil, raised up, like a headband, level with her eyebrows. She offered him her white-gloved hand without constraint, as she had the day before, as on the previous morning, as if neither the night, nor Gerald, the scene in the park, as if none of those shameful things had come between them! He gave her hand a timid pressure and sat back in the rocking-chair.

“Will you allow me to say a few words to you, dear madame?” he asked, looking at his brown leather shoes.

“With pleasure!” Mme. Chambannes answered deliberately, as she pulled an armchair beside that of the master.

She sat down and caressed the master with one of her warm looks: “I am listening, dear master.... Have you any trouble? Not from your family, I trust?”

Still smiling, she took her gloves off. Then she lifted her arms, like two graceful handles on each side of her face, and with difficulty pulled out the long pin which held her sailor hat.

“You are mistaken!” stammered M. Raindal, his eyes still unresponsive. “It is precisely of Langrune that....”

His hands hanging loose, his wrists contracted. The ingenuous air of Mme. Chambannes revolted him as a last challenge to his credulity.

“Well?” asked the young woman.

He dared to stare at her. What! Those lips were still fresh after so much defilement! No trace of it had polluted the clearness of her eyes. Not even a shudder; not a blush! Did lies then wash out everything in their foul waters? A renewed anger roused M. Raindal. His caution was shaken. The prepared words vanished. Looking straight at her, his hands grasping the armchair as if better to spring, he declared roughly:

“I am going!”

“You are going!” ZozÉ exclaimed, in a tone of well-simulated wonder.

M. Raindal recollected somewhat the words that had to be used.

“Excuse my rudeness, my bad temper.... I received this morning from Langrune such a pressing letter that I must give in to the ladies’ wish.... They claim me over there and I am going.... Rest assured that I am very sorry!”

There was a pause. ZozÉ thought it out. Now that she was sure he was leaving, why should she not preserve her assumed innocence, the persistence of which could but draw off his suspicions? It was with an imperceptible smile that she said:

“I believe you, dear master, although you surprise me.”

“I ... surprise you, dear madame?” M. Raindal asked sullenly, his heart beating more rapidly.

“You see, I was downstairs this morning when the postman came.... He gave me all the mail and there was no letter for you!”

M. Raindal preserved a challenging silence, disdaining to clear himself, not denying his deception.

“Come, dear master!” ZozÉ went on gently. “Since there was no letter, what is it that makes you leave us? Has anyone upset you? Have we hurt your feelings unwittingly? Please, tell me who it is, I beg you.”

Her eyes looked all around, as if she were trying to discover the culprit, the naughty, wicked unknown one who had upset her dear master. M. Raindal watched her for an instant, his lips convulsed with disgust.

“Who? Tell me who it is!” he repeated to himself. This was really too much of an imposture, altogether too impudent! He pushed back his armchair. His jaws were parted, ready to bite, ready to let out the whole burden of questions, outrages, reproach. But, in a supreme effort, he mastered himself. He paced up and down before ZozÉ, in a short space of ten feet, and said in a voice broken by his fury:

“Do not ask me anything, dear madame! Nothing ... it would be useless!... I must go and I am going.... I can say no more to you.... I do not know if you understand me, and I wish that you would not.... Yes, I wish that with all my soul!... Alas, on the contrary, I am very much afraid that you have understood....”

“But, dear master!” ZozÉ protested.

“All right, dear madame!... You do not understand me?... All the better.... You will later, when you think it over.... The only thing I ask you is that you should avoid any struggle for me.... Lend yourself to my little stratagem: you know, the letter received ... the letter which I did not receive.... Because my resolution is irrevocable.... I shall leave this afternoon.... To remain here one single day would be humiliating to me.... I cannot!... I cannot!”

He was choking. ZozÉ rose to her feet and caught his hand, which he made no attempt to withdraw.

“I do not understand you, dear master.... You are free.... I have no right to detain you.... But I beg your pardon if I have offended you!” she said with emotion, not more than half of which was feigned.

M. Raindal turned his head away. He did not wish her to see his eyes, which were full of tears. He released his own hand from hers and pretended to be examining the lawn, the park, the clouds.

“I thank you, dear madame.... I have nothing to forgive you!” he said, coughing as if he wished to force back a new rush of tears which made his voice hoarse. “I shall leave this afternoon by the five lock train.... Do not bother about me.... Please only let me have Firmin.... He will help me pack my things.... Hm! Hm! Hm!”

He kept on coughing and then became melancholy.

“Hm! Hm!... When I am gone, when I am no longer here, I hope that you will think sometimes of your dear....” He corrected himself,—“of your old master who, on his part, even from afar, will not forget you....”

The solemnity of this promise completed his confusion. Hurriedly, as if stricken with a sudden indisposition, he ran into the drawing-room, then through the hall and up the stairs.

ZozÉ ran behind him, chirping, in her softest, tenderest intonation: “Dear master!... Dear master!... And in Paris.... In Paris ... we shall meet again, sha we?”

He only replied when he was at the top of the stairs, his voice clear once more, intending to leave no doubt, afterward, in the minds of those in the house:

“To be sure, dear madame.... I shall transmit your message to my daughter.... Besides, we can talk about it again at lunch, before I go.”

As soon as he reached Paris, M. Raindal informed himself of the trains for Langrune. There were two: an evening one which arrived there in the night, another one in the morning which would reach Langrune in the afternoon. To inform his family of his arrival by telegram would alarm them. He chose not to leave until the next morning, and to spend the night at the nearest hotel. Slowly he walked towards the station yard, where the setting sun distilled a mist of gold.

An endless procession of people passed him, on the pavement and under the arcades. It was the departure of the suburban workers who returned at night to the open fields, and of the smarter population of the villas of the Seine-et-Oise region. First came clerks marching briskly, by twos and in step, their hats on the backs of their heads because of the heat; then the bourgeois, who held carefully beyond the reach of shocks their packages of dainties tied with red strings; young women in light dresses with white gloves like those ZozÉ wore; well-groomed men who stood up in their open cabs, to jump out more quickly.... All of them were going towards a place of rest, perhaps towards love, to the peace of the country, the beautiful night under the trees, to the priceless happiness which M. Raindal had just deserted.

The maste sadness and weariness were increased by this. He sat down on the terrace of a near-by cafÉ and ordered an absinthe.

His eyes burned, for he had wept again in the train, careless of all pride, unable to resist his pain. ZozÉ had fallen in with his wishes by not accompanying him to the station. The parting had been public, before Aunt Panhias, the Marquis de Meuze, Gerald and Chambannes all gathered together. The master had purposely come down late in order to shorten the cruel instant. Vain calculation! He had had to wait fully five minutes on the steps, before them all, to smile, speak and answer questions.... What a martyrdom it had been! If only he had been able to kiss Zoz hand, to kiss it with fire, with intoxication, as before ... to take a last taste of that forsaken delight!... But they were looking! It had been, instead, a cold and superficial kiss on the fingers of his little pupil, and it had seemed to him that his very lips were surprised! Well, these torments had been slight, compared to those that would soon follow!

To-morrow he would be at Langrune, miles and miles away, compelled to explain his return, a prisoner of his family, exiled on a gloomy seashore! To-morrow, he would be once more Mme. Rainda husband, Mlle. Rainda father, M. Raindal, of the Institute, an austere old savant, with no one to make his life pleasant, with no clandestine friendship, no little pupil, no secret distraction, apart from his books—books to write, books to read, books to review!...

“Books, books, always books!” he murmured, in a sickened tone.

And a thought intrigued him; it was to stay in Paris and find some means of avoiding Langrune.

The clock of the station struck seven. He paid the waiter and walked towards the boulevards.

Where could he dine? He remembered the name of a restaurant, in the place de la Madeleine, the cooking of which Chambannes and the Marquis had often praised before him.

He sauntered in that direction. The room was still half empty. He ordered a choice dinner, with such dishes as ZozÉ preferred, a bottle of Saint-Estephe and a bottle of frappÉ Champagne which was placed before him in a silver vase. His absinthe encouraged him to these libations. Since he had drunk it, he felt livelier and less sad.

He ate abundantly and applied himself to drinking. His ideas became lighter and seemed to penetrate one another. It was a pleasant confusion, and made him giggle at times. Towards the end of the dinner, he conceived the project of a drama, a myth in dialogue form, which would be entitled Hercules. He would show Vice, under the guise of a woman—who in the maste mind resembled ZozÉ exactly—entering the house of the now aged hero. And the latter would lament, would weep over his departed youth, and would implore the gods to give it back to him.... The drama developed according to this theme, in lofty axioms and lyrical plaints.

This was a much more likely conception than that which represented Hercules choosing, in the prime of his youth, between Vice and Virtue. Did such a choice offer itself in real life? Of course not; one walked on with the one, misunderstanding the other, and vice versa. What libertine did not some day regret the hours spent in debauchery? What man of intellect did not deplore, at some fatal moment, the fact that he had lived in ignorance of the forbidden pleasures? Rare were the men, who, by divine grace, mixed the practice of both in a fair proportion.... There would be, besides, in his myth, avenging blank verses against Vice, against Mme. Chambannes!

M. Raindal rose and shook the crumbs off his waistcoat. In a shaky hand he took his felt hat and walking-stick which the headwaiter handed him. Then, his eyes somewhat cloudy, he walked up the boulevards. Darkness had fallen. The merry crowd of nocturnal walkers rubbed elbows on the pavement. A late summer breath bent the tips of the withering chestnut trees.

M. Raindal once more thought of ZozÉ, of the lime-trees and the park. A thousand seductive images zigzagged under his burning cranium. He felt like embracing, hugging, loving someone.

When he passed the door of the Olympia, the posters attracted him. He saw women in tights, equilibrists and a young person in a low-neck dress, standing in the middle of a group of trained dogs. Above the posters the name of the establishment, made up of red electric bulbs, scintillated in ruby-colored letters. Girls went in, alone or by twos. Through the half-open swinging doors came confused whiffs of lively music.

M. Raindal hesitated. Then, with a gesture as quick as a pickpocke, he tore from his button-hole his button of an officer of the LÉgion onneur. He marched straight to the ticket-office, then disappeared inside.