The void beyond the dark hill tops was red, a glowing red that the eye
would not fear, and Duroy, despite himself, felt the majesty of the
close of the day. He murmured, finding no other term strong enough to
express his admiration, "It is stunning."
Forestier raised his head, and turning to his wife, said: "Let me have
some fresh air."
"Pray, be careful," was her reply. "It is late, and the sun is setting;
you will catch a fresh cold, and you know how bad that is for you."
He made a feverish and feeble movement with his right hand that was
almost meant for a blow, and murmured with a look of anger, the grin of
a dying man that showed all the thinness of his lips, the hollowness of
the cheeks, and the prominence of all the bones of the face: "I tell you
I am stifling. What does it matter to you whether I die a day sooner or
a day later, since I am done for?"
She opened the window quite wide. The air that entered surprised all
three like a caress. It was a soft, warm breeze, a breeze of spring,
already laden with the scents of the odoriferous shrubs and flowers
which sprang up along this shore. A powerful scent of turpentine and
the harsh savor of the eucalyptus could be distinguished.
Forestier drank it in with short and fevered gasps. He clutched the arm
of his chair with his nails, and said in low, hissing, and savage tones:
"Shut the window. It hurts me; I would rather die in a cellar."
His wife slowly closed the window, and then looked out in space, her
forehead against the pane. Duroy, feeling very ill at ease, would have
liked to have chatted with the invalid and reassured him. But he could
think of nothing to comfort him. At length he said: "Then you have not
got any better since you have been here?"
Forestier shrugged his shoulders with low-spirited impatience. "You see
very well I have not," he replied, and again lowered his head.
Duroy went on: "Hang it all, it is ever so much nicer here than in
Paris. We are still in the middle of winter there. It snows, it freezes,
it rains, and it is dark enough for the lamps to be lit at three in the
afternoon."
"Anything new at the paper?" asked Forestier.
"Nothing. They have taken on young Lacrin, who has left the _Voltaire_,
to do your work, but he is not up to it. It is time that you came back."
The invalid muttered: "I--I shall do all my work six feet under the sod
now."
This fixed idea recurred like a knell _apropos_ of everything,
continually cropping up in every idea, every sentence. There was a long
silence, a deep and painful silence. The glow of the sunset was slowly
fading, and the mountains were growing black against the red sky, which
was getting duller. A colored shadow, a commencement of night, which yet
retained the glow of an expiring furnace, stole into the room and seemed
to tinge the furniture, the walls, the hangings, with mingled tints of
sable and crimson. The chimney-glass, reflecting the horizon, seemed
like a patch of blood. Madame Forestier did not stir, but remained
standing with her back to the room, her face to the window pane.
Forestier began to speak in a broken, breathless voice, heartrending to
listen to. "How many more sunsets shall I see? Eight, ten, fifteen, or
twenty, perhaps thirty--no more. You have time before you; for me it is
all over. And it will go on all the same, after I am gone, as if I was
still here." He was silent for a few moments, and then continued: "All
that I see reminds me that in a few days I shall see it no more. It is
horrible. I shall see nothing--nothing of all that exists; not the
smallest things one makes use of--the plates, the glasses, the beds in
which one rests so comfortably, the carriages. How nice it is to drive
out of an evening! How fond I was of all those things!"
He nervously moved the fingers of both hands, as though playing the
piano on the arms of his chair. Each of his silences was more painful
than his words, so evident was it that his thoughts must be fearful.
Duroy suddenly recalled what Norbert de Varenne had said to him some
weeks before, "I now see death so near that I often want to stretch out
my arms to put it back. I see it everywhere. The insects crushed on the
path, the falling leaves, the white hair in a friend's beard, rend my
heart and cry to me, 'Behold!'"
He had not understood all this on that occasion; now, seeing Forestier,
he did. An unknown pain assailed him, as if he himself was sensible of
the presence of death, hideous death, hard by, within reach of his hand,
on the chair in which his friend lay gasping. He longed to get up, to go
away, to fly, to return to Paris at once. Oh! if he had known he would
not have come.
Darkness had now spread over the room, like premature mourning for the
dying man. The window alone remained still visible, showing, within the
lighter square formed by it, the motionless outline of the young wife.
Forestier remarked, with irritation, "Well, are they going to bring in
the lamp to-night? This is what they call looking after an invalid."
The shadow outlined against the window panes disappeared, and the sound
of an electric bell rang through the house. A servant shortly entered
and placed a lamp on the mantelpiece. Madame Forestier said to her
husband, "Will you go to bed, or would you rather come down to dinner?"