December 9th.
What am I doing here? I am really becoming ashamed of my useless life . . . I had to bake some bread to-day, and could not summon up courage to do it. All the little details in which I used to take pleasure, like those egotists in disguise—recluses and hermits—I now find despicable. I am completely cured, only an occasional pain on very cold days. My duty is on the ramparts with the others . . . But how can I manage to rejoin them? It appears that the investment is very close, and the sentinels are placed within rifle-shot of each other. If I had only a companion, some countryman who knows the roads well. My thoughts fly to Goudeloup. I ought not to have allowed him to leave me. Who knows where he may be now? Perhaps strung up to some roadside cross, or dead from cold at the bottom of a quarry. However, the other evening, towards the Meillottes, I heard a cry—nothing but a cry, but a terrible cry, long and despairing, like a wail; and it flashed across me, “Goudeloup is there!” . . . Ah, yes! that man is a murderer; but at any rate he acts; he satisfies brutally the thirst for vengeance and justice which is in him. As for me, I warm myself and sleep. Which of us two is the most contemptible?
December 10th.
Returned to Champrosay in bitter cold weather. The houses along the roadside, with all their dark, empty windows, looked like sad and blind beggars. I visited again the park, the summer-house at the waterside, and the smiling portrait which inhabits it. The cold air had not dimmed the peaceful face, nor the soft shades of the summer dress. Only the glance seemed to me more stern and severe, as if it contained a reproach. On the very threshold I understood I was no longer welcome. Cautiously I closed the door again, and went down the frozen, moss-covered steps . . . And all through the night the clear gaze of that fair Parisian remorselessly haunted me.