They thought him mad, but they never reviled or taunted him, for he was known throughout the entire breadth of that city as a man of noble deeds and imperishable kindness.
“Poor boy!” said Susannah, the Jewish woman who sold vegetables, “’tis a pity so fine a fellow should be wasted. Those lips of his were made for kissing.”
“You say what is right,” agreed Zacyntha, a lewd Greek woman. “A night of love with him would but whet one’s appetite.”
Strange it was that none of those women of the half-world ever attempted to tamper with him, but vileness must always recognize and fear what is pure. They gazed at him often with eyes of longing, it is true, but the gaze he gave in return was always the very negation of sex.
“A fool! A Parsifal!” commented the respectable ladies, for most of them would most gladly have lost their respectability had Dmitri been willing to snatch it from them.
Now, in a dark street of that city it was that Dmitri dwelt, inhabiting two rooms in the house of Jacques Laborde, a young Frenchman who taught many languages. Jacques and his wife, Madelein, loved him for his goodness, but a time came when they were afraid on his account.
“You have noticed something, eh?” asked Madelein one night, as she and her husband sat alone.
“About him?... Yes, yes. How can one express it? It is just as though he had begun to lose himself, as though he had spent so much of himself that there was little left to spend—less every day.”
“Yes—that’s it. Yet his appetite is good, he is as strong as ever, and he has never been more cheerful.”
“Do you ever feel,” asked Jacques, after a pause, “do you ever feel when he is talking to you, that he is giving you something of himself—merging his personality into yours?”