I was going to bed yesterday evening, although it was only nine o'clock, when a telegram was handed to me. A friend, one of my dearest, sent me this message: "I am at Monte-Carlo for four days, and have been telegraphing to you at every port on the coast. Come to me at once."
And behold, the wish to see him, the longing to talk, to laugh, to gossip about society, about things, about people; the longing to slander, to criticize, to blame, to judge, to chatter, was alight within me in a moment, like a conflagration. On that morning, even, I should have been furious at this recall, yet in the evening I was enchanted at it; I wished myself already there, with the great dining-room of the restaurant full of people before my eyes, and in my ears that murmur of voices in which the numbers of the roulette table dominate all other phrases, like the Dominus vobiscum of the church services.
I called Bernard.
"We shall start at about four o'clock in the morning for Monaco," I said to him.
He replied philosophically:
"If it is fine, sir."
"It will be fine."
"The barometer is going down, though."
"Pooh! it will go up again."
The mariner smiled an incredulous smile.