CHAPTER XXXVI
DREAMS
When Adams arrived at the Avenue Malakoff he found Berselius in the library. He was seated in a big armchair, and M. Pinchon, his secretary, a man dry-looking as an account-book, bald, and wearing spectacles, was just leaving the room with some shorthand notes of business letters to be typed.
Berselius was much changed; his hair was quite gray, his eyes, once so calm, forceful, and intrinsically brilliant, had lost their lustre, his face wore the expression of a confirmed invalid.
Great discontent was the predominant feature of this expression.
It was only within the last few days that this had appeared. On recovering from the hardships of the forest and on the voyage home, though weak enough, he had been serene, mild, amiable and rather listless, but during the last few days something was visibly troubling him.
He had “gone off,” to use an expressive phrase sometimes employed by physicians.
A strange thing had happened to Berselius. Ever since the recovery of his memory his new self had contemplated the past from the heights of new birth, calmly conscious of the fact that this past belonged to a man who was dead. The more he examined this past the more he loathed the man to whom it had belonged, but the difference between that man and himself was so profound that he felt, rightly, that he was not He.