While thinking, I heard a far distant voice crying:

"Thou, love another? Two beings who love, who embrace, and who are not
thou and I! Is such a thing possible? Are you a fool?"

"Coward!" said Desgenais, "when will you forget that woman? Is she such
a great loss? Take the first comer and console yourself."

"No," I replied, "it is not such a great loss. Have I not done what I
ought? Have I not driven her away from here? What have you to say to
that? The rest concerns me; the bull wounded in the arena can lie down
in a corner with the sword of the matador 'twixt his shoulders, and die
in peace. What can I do, tell me? What do you mean by first comer?
You will show me a cloudless sky, trees and houses, men who talk, drink,
sing, women who dance and horses that gallop. All that is not life, it
is the noise of life. Go, go, leave me in peace."




CHAPTER V

A PHILOSOPHER'S ADVICE

Desgenais saw that my despair was incurable, that I would neither listen
to any advice nor leave my room, he took the thing seriously. I saw him
enter one evening with an expression of gravity on his face; he spoke of
my mistress and continued in his tone of persiflage, saying all manner of
evil of women. While he was speaking I was leaning on my elbow, and,