At the railway station M. Mauperin saw the doctor getting into the
train. He got into another compartment, as he did not feel as though he
had the strength to speak to him or even look at him.
On arriving in Paris he went to a chemist's and was told that it would
take three hours to make up the prescription. "Three hours!" he
exclaimed, but at heart he was glad that it would be so long. It would
give him some time before returning to the house. When once he was in
the street he walked fast. He had no consecutive ideas, but a sort of
heavy, ceaseless throbbing in his head like the throb of neuralgia. His
sensations were blunted, as though he were in a stupor. He saw nothing
but the legs of people walking and the wheels of the carriages turning
round. His head felt heavy and at the same time empty. As he saw other
people walking, he walked too. The passers-by appeared to be taking him
with them, and the crowd to be carrying him along in its stream.
Everything looked faint, indistinct, and of a neutral tint, as things
do the day after any wild excitement or intoxication. The light and
noise of the streets he seemed to see and hear in a dream. He would not
have known there was any sun if it had not been for the white trousers
the policemen were wearing, which had caught his eye several times.
It was all the same to him whether he went to the right or left. He
neither wanted anything nor had he the energy to do anything. He was
surprised to see the movement around him--people who were hurrying
along, walking quickly, on their way to something. He had had neither
aim nor object in life for the last few hours. It seemed to him as
though the world had come to an end, as though he were a dead man in the
midst of the life and activity of Paris. He tried to think of anything
in all that might happen to a man capable of moving him, of touching him
in any way, and he could not conceive of anything which could reach to
the depths of his despair.
Sometimes, as though he were answering inquiries about his daughter, he
would say aloud, "Oh, yes, she is very ill!" and it was as though the
words he had uttered had been said by some one else at his side. Often a
work-girl without any hat, a pretty young girl with a round waist, gay
and healthy with the rude health of her class, would pass by him. He
would cross the street that he might not see her again. He was furious
just for a minute with all these people who passed him, with all these
useless lives. They were not beloved as his daughter was, and there was
no need for them to go on living. He went into one of the public gardens
and sat down. A child put some of its little sand-pies on to the tails
of his coat; other children getting bolder approached him with all the
daring of sparrows. Presently, feeling slightly embarrassed, they left
their little spades, stopped playing and stood round, looking shyly and
sympathetically, like so many men and women in miniature, at this tall
gentleman who was so sad. M. Mauperin rose and left the garden.
His tongue was furred and his throat dry. He went into a café, and
opposite him was a little girl wearing a white jacket and a straw hat.
Her frock was short, showing her little firm, bare legs with their white
socks. She was moving about all the time, climbing and jumping on to her
father and standing straight up on his knees. She had a little cross
round her neck. Every few minutes her father begged her to keep still.
M. Mauperin closed his eyes; he could see his own little daughter just
as she had been at six years old. Presently he opened a review, _The
Illustration_, and bent over it, trying to make himself look at the
pictures, and when he reached the last page he set himself to find out
one of the enigmas.
When M. Mauperin lifted his head again he wiped his face with his
handkerchief. He had made out the enigma: _"Against death there is no
appeal."_