"You have lost your old vivacity, my poor friend."
He murmured:
"There are many other things that I have lost!"
But in his heart, touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing
to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.
The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some
familiar intonation, some expression of her mother's, a certain style
of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which
people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot.
All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his
passion bleed anew.
He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image
of this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart,
inflamed his blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a
young one, the old one come back out of the past, and he loved her as
he had loved her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor,
after an interval of twenty-five years.
He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to
think what he should do.
But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the
glass, the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and
admired himself before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly,
gray-haired man; and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden
days, in the days of little Lise. He saw himself charming and
handsome, as he had been when he was loved! Then, drawing the light
nearer, he looked at himself more closely, as one inspects a strange
thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the wrinkles, discovering those
frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till now.
And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his
lamentable image, murmuring:
"All over, Lormerin!"