Here he was now, hoary and disfigured by age, unable to attract anyone, panting with love at the time when pleasure should be given up, enamored of a young woman who loved another! What a punishment! What agony! How long would it last? How long would it remain to show him the joys he had missed, thanks to pedantic vainglory and proud self-confidence?
He walked to the chimney. Standing before the mirror, he twisted his features in stranger grimaces to convince himself even more that his decrepitude was beyond hope. Ah! yes indeed, he had a pretty complexion, fine teeth and wrinkles, puffed skin and a nice flabby face, everything in short which he needed to seduce a young woman!
The wheels of a carriage crunched the gravel of the path. He heard voices raised in appeals and much laughter. George had arrived.
M. Raindal had a sudden desire to go down. He would allege the return of Chambannes and the wish to welcome his host; then he could see Zozé once more. His hand was on the handle of the door, but a scruple of pride kept him back. No, that would be too cowardly! He stayed upstairs.
He heard doors being closed. Silence again fell over the house. M. Raindal felt as if his heart had been stabbed again. He was thinking about the husband who was with his wife now.... His shoulders shook in a nasty sneer. Phew! he was not jealous of that unfortunate Chambannes! Really, there was nothing to envy him for! To be the husband of a brainless little fool, a worthless creature who, a minute ago.... He did not finish his thought. His eyes were bloodshot; brutal curses rushed to his lips; he was choking. M. Raindal opened the window.
The night was cooler. On the distant plain, trains passed at intervals, winding their coils of yellow lights on the horizon. Some roosters in the neighborhood, deceived by the false paleness of the sky, sent to each other, through space, their dauntless greetings, to which dogs howled in reply.
M. Raindal gravely contemplated the blue stars. Each was to him a sun with satellites gravitating round it. He asked himself how many sorrows, identical with his own, must be making men moan at that same moment, on those obscure planets. He reasoned, made calculations, intoxicating himself with lofty thoughts. He invoked Human Sorrow, the Sufferings of the Worlds, the Universal Complaint—the conventional pity, the lip-charity, the egotistic and hypocritically tender hygiene, all the declamatory remedies which books teach to alleviate personal sorrows. But he derived no solace from them.
Poor thinker, poor master, poor Man! Yes, he could indeed call to his help the spectacle of the heavens, the astronomers and the philosophers; he could call on Newton, Laplace, Kant and Hegel! He could swell himself up and make himself feel greater!
The fact remained that he still harbored within his own breast an atom of flesh which was more sensitive and real than all those vaunted infinites which were powerless alike to cure him and to dominate him.
What was there left to him in this overwhelming catastrophe? His family? He had, in the last year, lost even the desire to cherish them. His work? He hated the results of it, its lying mirage, its evil routine.