He thought I was mad. And he was not far wrong.
The inquiry was suspended for three weeks, and I was free to return to my misery and the streets of Paris.
I lived now in the streets. They were my only hope. From early morning till night I haunted the boulevards. Franzius had orders to telegraph to my club and to the Place Vendôme should any news reach the Pavilion, and the club porter grew weary of the inquiry: "Any telegram for me?"
Men began to avoid me as they do the stricken, the leprous, and the mad. I must have seemed mad, indeed, for ever wandering hither and thither, searching the crowded streets with eager eyes, scarcely answering if spoken to, careless and untidy in my dress, a phantom of myself. Like Poe's man of the crowd, I drifted about Paris, ever in the thick of the throng, seeking the most populous streets.
Impossible to tell in what quarter of the city caprice might have cast her, I sought her in all. Montmartre and La Villette, the Quartier Latin and the great boulevards: I dreaded only one thing—night.
Night, when my search must cease; night and the pitiless gas-lamps, the terrible gas-lamps. Then it was that light, the angel that all day had helped my search, became a devil, contracting itself, and spreading into a million heartless points to show me the darkness. Then it was that the stars burning in the clear sky above the city became part of my sorrow.
All things bright and all things fair were leagued against me, in that they fed the flame of my suffering; and the happiness and gaiety of others became the last insult of the world.
Then it was that Joubert showed himself in his true form. Not one word did he ever say to me, though my conduct, my manners, my disordered dress, must have given him food for the deepest speculation and disquiet. He would put out my clothes and attend to my wants, speak to me about ordinary topics, never heed my silence or my harsh replies. You see, he was an old soldier; he had seen men stricken so often that he knew the language and the signs of real grief and real suffering.
I lost count of the days, and from opium alone could I get any sleep. Absorbed in my grief, I took no heed of the events around me. I remember distinctly in cafés and at my club hearing men talking of the Hohenzollerns and the succession to the Spanish throne. Men talking vehemently about a subject which was to me as uninteresting and as unintelligible as algebra to a child. But I could feel the ferment and unrest around me.