—What task?
—To avoid every sort….
—Of intercourse. Do what honour counsels you, and trust to me for the rest. I will act with my daughter as it will be suitable for me to act. As for you, you have asserted that any other priest less honourable would have said to me: "We are going to engage in the struggle, it lies between us." I see now that in your mouth the word honourable signifies polite, for you have been polite, but the other alone would have been frank and honourable. "Between us" is better, "between us" pleases me. It is plainer and shorter. Again, I have the honour to salute you.
LIX.
ACTS AND WORDS.
"Intrigues of heavy dreams! We go to the right; darkness: we go to the left; darkness: in front; darkness … the thread which you think you hold, escapes out of your hand, and, triumphant for a moment, you set yourself again to grope your way to the catastrophe, which is a denseness of shadows."
CAMILLE LEMONNIERE (Croquis d'automne).
When the Captain had gone away, Marcel perceived the triumphant face of his servant. Mad with shame and rage he shut himself up in his room, and asked himself what was going to become of him. "What am I to do?" he said to himself; "here is the punishment already."
Nevertheless, on serious reflection, he saw a way all traced out before him; it was the ancient, the good, the old way which he had followed until then, and into which the Captain had just brutally driven him back:
The way of his duty.