sincere desire,—the fierce desire for money, which gives to these ridiculous mountebanks something even more odious and grim than their ridiculousness. That is the only thing that makes of these poor phantoms living human creatures.
There I knew Monsieur Jean, he too a psychologist and a moralist, a moralist of the servants' hall, a psychologist of the ante-room, scarcely more of a parvenu in his way, or more of a ninny, than he who reigned in the salon. Monsieur Jean emptied chamber-vessels; M. Paul Bourget emptied souls. Between the servants' hall and the salon there is not such a distance of servitude as we think. But, since I have put Monsieur Jean's photograph in the bottom of my trunk, let his memory remain, similarly buried, in the bottom of my heart, under a thick layer of oblivion.
It is two o'clock in the morning. My fire is going out, my lamp is smoking, and I have no more wood or oil. I am going to bed. But there is too much fever in my brain; I shall not sleep. I shall dream of him who is on the way to me. I shall dream of what is to happen to-morrow. Outside, the night is calm and silent. A sharp, cold air is hardening the ground, beneath a sky sparkling with stars. And somewhere in this night Joseph is on his way. Through space I see him,—yes, really, I see him, serious, dreaming, enormous, in his
