"Electric treatment!" I repeated with artless stupor, an affectation of ignorance, so as to please the albino's vanity and thus prolong the conversation.
It is true that in the shop, narrow and long like a corridor, there flowed a draught of cool air that favored chatting. The place was shaded. A clerk slept peacefully in a chair, his chin on his bosom, in the shadow of a terrestrial globe. Nobody entered.
There was something ridiculous about the bookseller. His sallow face, his shrivelled mouth, and nasal twang amused me, and in the quiet of the bookshop it was very agreeable to hear the confirmation of the incurable malady of a man abhorred.
"Have the doctors no hope of curing him?" I said, to stimulate the albino.
"Impossible."
"Let us hope it is possible, for the sake of literature."
"Impossible."
"But it seems to me that, in progressive paralysis, there are cases that have been cured."
"No, signor, no. He may live two, three, four years yet, but he cannot be cured."
"It seems to me, however——"