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By Root 1364 0

the window. This time he was going away, when a shadow passed. The movement was so rapid that he thought he might be mistaken, but one after another other shadows passed, and there seemed quite a commotion in the room. Rivetted again to the pavement opposite, he experienced an insupportable sensation of burning in the stomach. Profiles or arms and legs came and went. An enormous hand, bearing the silhouette of a water-can, glided by. He distinguished nothing clearly, yet he thought he recognised a woman’s head of hair; and he argued within himself, it was like Sabine’s head-dress, only the back of the neck seemed broader than hers. But at that hour he was incapable of determining, he could not tell. His stomach caused him so much suffering that he pressed up against a door, like a shivering outcast, to obtain relief in the agony of this frightful uncertainty. Then as, in spite of all, he could not take his eyes from off that window, his anger melted into the imagination of a moralist. He saw himself a deputy. He was speaking in the Chamber, inveighing against debauchery, prophesying catastrophes, and he repeated the arguments in Fauchery’s article on the poisonous fly, and declared that society could no longer exist with the manners and customs of the Second Empire. This did him some good. The shadows had now disappeared. No doubt they had gone back to bed. He, ever on the watch, still waited.

Three o’clock struck, then four o’clock. He could not tear himself away. Each time a shower came down he squeezed up against the door-post, the rain beating on his legs. No one passed by now. Occasionally his eyes closed, as though burnt by the ray of light, on which, with obstinate folly, he persistently fixed them. Twice again did the shadows reappear, going through the same movements, carrying the same gigantic water-can; and each time afterwards all became still as before, whilst the lamp continued to glimmer discreetly. These shadows increased his doubts. Besides, a sudden idea had just appeased him, in deferring the hour of action. He had merely to wait till the woman came out. He would easily recognise Sabine. Nothing could be simpler, there would be no scandal, and he would no longer be in doubt. All he had to do was to remain there. Of all the confused feelings that had hitherto agitated him, he no longer experienced anything but a morbid desire to know. Having nothing to do, however, standing up against that door, soon made him feel drowsy. To keep himself awake, he tried to calculate the time it would be necessary for him to wait. Sabine was to have arrived at the station at about nine o’clock. That gave him almost four and a half hours. He was full of patience. He would never have moved again, finding a charm in fancying that his night vigil would be an eternal one.

Suddenly, the ray of light disappeared. This very simple occurrence was an unexpected catastrophe for him, something disagreeable and annoying. They had evidently turned out the lamp, and were going to sleep. At such an hour it was only natural. But he felt irritated, because that window, being now in darkness, no longer interested him. He watched it for a quarter of an hour longer, then it tired him, so he left the doorway and took a few steps along the pavement. Until five o’clock, he walked to and fro, occasionally raising his eyes. The window remained in the same dormant state; and at times he would ask himself whether he had not dreamed that he had seen shadows cross those panes. A great fatigue overwhelmed him, which made him forget what he was waiting for at that street-corner, stumbling over the paving-stones, awaking with starts and the cold shiver of a man who no longer knows where he is. What was the good of his bothering himself about the matter? As the people had gone to sleep, all he had to do was to leave them in peace. Why should he mix himself up in their affairs? It was very dark, no one would know of his having waited there; and then all feeling in him, even his curiosity, fled, carried away in a desire to have done with it all, and to seek