Among the flakes of this verbal fog, Entragues suspected Dazin of having wished to suggest the birth of puberty and the awaking of the senses. He knew the facile arcena of these strained phrases of which Dazin was not the inventor. Such a style was not absolutely to be condemned, provided one only used it for the sake of desired obscurities and with the glossary of a context.
Mortified at being understood by a simple analyst, Dazin left.
"He believes himself," Renaudeau said, "a Mallarmé or a more subtle Laforgue."
"He has not even surprised," Calixte Heliot answered, "the most elementary of their processes."
"The processes of a poet," Entragues said, "are part of his talent: it would be quite sterile to possess it. Mallarmé plays with the complementary colors of those with which he wishes to suggest vision. If Dazin had remained, I would have given him this secret and also told him that to be a more subtle Laforgue, one must have more than a capricious syntax, abusive metaphors of rare words, and the like—one must have a spontaneity which touches the heart."
Hubert and Calixte left together and walked at random through the streets, continuing, almost always in agreement, the conversation begun in the Revue.
This time, again, they did not separate until the hour of sleep; they were happy in enjoying each other, with the certainty of likewise delighting each other, of expressing concordant thoughts, of offering nothing that would be a blasphemy to the other.
As they were noting the parallelism of these two evenings which chance meetings had given them, at a short interval, Hubert remarked the duality in the development of events.
"When an act is produced, it is always produced a second time. This is an axiom. It is evident that, to demonstrate it, one would have to be fortified with a multiplicity of historic anecdotes, and I do not know if this is possible. As far as I and my past life are concerned, there is such a surprising and frightful exactitude in the axiom that I believe I could predict nearly half the things which will happen to me from to-day until the last sleep. Besides, this axiom, perhaps, is quite personal to me, special to my organism. Such a tendency to repetition is not the source of any joy. I wish that pleasures could be doubled like pains and that the proportion, in short, could remain the same, but consider the infirmity of mathematics applied to the human soul: it is assuredly less painful to me to have seven griefs for one felicity than to bear a double weight counterbalanced by such a weak duplication as that of one to two. Prolonged to infinity, the two proportions would go on eternally equipoised, but the scale of pains breaks with its chains and crushes our hearts."
At the request of Calixte, skilful in diverting a conversation headed for the abysses, Entragues related some of his plans to his friend. What works to be constructed! It was not that the freestone was lacking, nor cement, nor accessories; it was a question of time. He had, ready for erection, more ideas than a century could utilize, and sometimes the things which would never be done frightened and haunted him like a swarming of gnomes. He had thought of this on certain mornings: to put some books, his copybooks, his notes, his written sheets in a valise and hide himself for the rest of his life in a closed house, facing the sea. He saw it built on the dunes, between the strand and the first trees of the coast: no vegetation nearby excepting the pallid grass, the violet thistles and the tall darnels; the view of steeples far off, on the land side; on the other side, the sea and a lighthouse, amid wind and wave, like a symbol. Wagons pass, full of sea-weed; horses and men pant on the sand, yoked to the labor of the fecundation of the ground, and he, yoked to the labor of the sterilization of desires, would watch them pass. Towards the equinoxes, the spray of waves agitated by moon and tempest would come to strike against his window, like a bird's wing. And birds would also come towards the gleam of his lamp and he would open his window to the spray of waves and the wings of birds. Like a monster, he would be alone. "For we are monsters, my poor Calixte, we have put our duty above life; our souls afar from men, like fabulous dragons, we guard imaginary treasures, and we know it, and to this nothingness we sacrifice all, even our life! We have hearts of anchorites and we would court women! Ah! were I there—a hermit among my dreams, an excellent shelter—I should write what I shall perhaps not write: a work. But to what end? Now, at other times I would like to get into some fixed habit, punctually deliver myself to love, quarrel with my wife at stated hours, rise late, enfeeble the ennui of evenings in the vain noise of theaters, eat nourishing foods which charge the nerves with vibrant fluids, and busy myself, during rainy hours, with an honorable compilation."