While he was speaking I was leaning
on my elbow, and, rising in my bed, I listened attentively.
It was one of those somber evenings when the sighing of the wind
resembles the moans of a dying man; a storm was brewing, and between the
splashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All
nature suffers in such moments; the trees writhe in pain and twist their
heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of
cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time
before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and
the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not clearly
distinguish what was passing in my head; it seemed to me that I was under
the influence of a horrible dream and that I had but to awake to find
myself cured; at times it seemed that my entire life had been a dream,
ridiculous and childish, the falseness of which had just been disclosed.
Desgenais was seated near the lamp at my side; he was firm and serious,
although a smile hovered about his lips. He was a man of heart, but as
dry as a pumice-stone. An early experience had made him bald before his
time; he knew life and had suffered; but his grief was a cuirass; he was
a materialist and he waited for death.
"Octave," he said, "after what has happened to you I see that you believe
in love such as the poets and romancers have represented; in a word, you
believe in what is said here below and not in what is done.
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