“Monsieur, be so good as to get up, I beg of you.” It was the Count François who spoke.
And I arose, without the slightest difficulty. I was weak, very weak indeed, but light, ever so light ... as light as the air about me....
The Count François spoke again:
“Monsieur, my father is very tired today; he is in no condition to leave his room. For that reason my son and I have come to ask you to go with us to him.”
I followed them.... What difference did it make to me whether I was in one place or in another?
* * * * * * * * *
The old man, the Marquis Gaspard, I did not see.... A portière of antique silk was standing in front of his bed, there in his chamber. Of the bed I could see the four columns of carved wood which supported the canopy. It was a square bed, without curtains.... That was all I saw....
But I recognized the queer falsetto of the marquis, and the marvelously gentle and persuasive tone his voice could assume, when it was not hardened with wilfulness or soured with irony.
The Living Man began to speak. I stood in the doorway listening.... And as I listened, this worn-out memory of mine, a memory so wasted, so decayed that one by one all my recollections of the good old days have fallen away as dust from it, took in his every word so deeply, so burningly, that I shall remember all he said till my course is wholly run.
He began to speak. He said: