The excitement which had possessed me at the beginning of our conversation
gradually calmed down; I felt our meeting rather strange and nothing more.
I did not like the little smile with which the baron cross-examined me; I
did not like the expression of his eyes when he, as it were, stuck them
like pins into me.... There was something in them rapacious, patronising
... something unnerving. Those eyes I had not seen in the dream. A
strange face was the baron’s! Faded, fatigued, and, at the same time,
young-looking--unpleasantly young-looking! My ‘dream-father’ had not the
deep scar either which ran slanting right across my new acquaintance’s
forehead, and which I had not noticed till I came closer to him.
I had hardly told the baron the name of the street, and the number of
the house in which we were living, when a tall negro, swathed up to the
eyebrows in a cloak, came up to him from behind, and softly tapped him on
the shoulder. The baron turned round, ejaculated, ‘Aha! at last!’ and with
a slight nod to me, went with the negro into the café. I was left under the
awning; I meant to await the baron’s return, not so much with the object
of entering into conversation with him again (I really did not know what
to talk about to him), as to verify once more my first impression. But
half-an-hour passed, an hour passed.... The baron did not appear. I went
into the café, passed through all the rooms, but could see nowhere the
baron or the negro.... They must both have gone out by a back-door.
My head ached a little, and to get a little fresh air, I walked along the
seafront to a large park outside the town, which had been laid out two
hundred years ago.
After strolling for a couple of hours in the shade of the immense oaks and
plane-trees, I returned home.