Amédée drew near, going discreetly round by the other side of the pillar. As he was about to touch him on the shoulder:
“In that case, what does it matter?” declaimed Julius, and he consigned these words with a final flourish to his note-book; then, putting his pencil in his pocket and rising abruptly, he came nose to nose with Amédée.
“In Heaven’s name, what are you doing here?”
Amédée, trembling with emotion, began to stutter without being able to reply; he convulsively pressed one of Julius’s hands between both his own. Julius, in the meanwhile, was examining him:
“My poor fellow, what a sight you look!”
Providence had dealt unkindly with Julius; of the two brothers in-law who were left to him, one was a church mouse and the other a scarecrow. It was less than three years since he had seen Amédée—but he thought him aged by at least twelve; his cheeks were sunken; his Adam’s apple was protuberant; his magenta comforter enhanced the paleness of his face; his chin was quivering; his blear eyes rolled in a way which should have been pathetic, but was merely grotesque; his yesterday’s expedition had left him with a mysterious hoarseness, so that his voice seemed to come from a long way off. Full of his preoccupations:
“So you have seen him?” he said.
“Seen whom?” asked Julius.
This “whom” sounded in Amédée’s ears like a knell and a blasphemy. He particularised discreetly:
“I thought you had just come from the Vatican.”