‘Where’s the use of facing a new one?’ asked the Doctor, with a vague, dull glance into space. ‘The same chatter, the same humbug, the same vulgarity and fraud. Always the same, and inevitably the same. New idols, new theories, new habits start up to prove more monotonous than the old ones——’
‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,’ interrupted Gaston Favre.
‘Exactly, and Alphonse Karr was not the first to find it out. I have a better plan, lads, for saluting the new century than your Scotchman’s tod-dy and Les Temps Jadis,—than even the insipid shake-hands of Albion.’
The punch had gone to the young heads, and gave them a craving for excitement. Each one leant forward over his glass, with shining eyes and flushed cheeks, eager and expectant. It was not often that Dr. Vermont condescended to plan for their amusement.
‘Let us suppose ourselves singing Les Neiges d’Antan, and toasting our old acquaintances. We shall awaken into a new century, just the same as the old. The more it changes, the more it will be the same. Are you not prospectively tired of it already?’
He looked round gravely upon the young men, and excitement died out of each glance under the sad indifference of his. They felt upon their honour to be no less weary and cynical than he. A nod of emphatic agreement from the three young pessimists was supplemented to the Doctor’s monologue, as he continued—
‘Suppose we salute the twentieth century—already worn before birth—by a single pistol-shot, the mouth of each man’s to his brains. As we are none of us likely to do anything with our brains, more than the hundreds of other young men I have seen vanish from these tables into nothingness, there can be no patriotic objection to our blowing them out in company.’
The young men sat back in their chairs, and drew a long, deep breath. They were almost sobered for the moment, and profoundly troubled by their leader’s extraordinary proposition. However firmly we may be convinced of the nothingness of life, such a method of toasting the new year is calculated to give the stoutest courage pause. Not that they held any squeamish objections to suicide—quite the contrary, they professed to regard it as the natural and legitimate remedy for a broken heart, damaged honour, or a ruined life. But, tudieu! they all sat there drinking their punch in freedom and security, with pockets not inconveniently full, it is true, but with sound hearts and sounder appetites. The prison was not before them: then, why the deuce should they be offered the grave?
‘I thought, like Solomon, you were disposed to complain of the sameness of all things under the sun,’ sneered the Doctor.
‘That is true, Doctor,’ assented Anatole. ‘But suppose we were to find things just as same beyond the sun—or a good deal worse? For, after all, we may flatter ourselves with being sceptics, but what security have we that the pistol-shot will be the end of it all? and what if it happened to be infernally disagreeable somewhere else, and there was no getting back?’