People who travel in far countries may have come across, in various
cities or among old ruins--one year in Russia, another perhaps in
Egypt--an elderly couple who seem to be always moving about, neither
seeing nor even looking at anything. They are the Mauperins, the poor
heart-broken father and mother, who are now quite alone in the world,
Renée's sister having died after the birth of her first child.
They sold all they possessed and set out to wander round the world. They
no longer care for anything, and go about from one country to another,
from one hotel to the next, with no interest whatever in life. They are
like things which have been uprooted and flung to the four winds of
heaven. They wander about like exiles on earth, rushing away from their
tombs, but carrying their dead about with them everywhere, endeavouring
to weary out their grief with the fatigue of railway journeys, dragging
all that is left them of life to the very ends of the earth, in the hope
of wearing it out and so finishing with it.