THE SIMONIAC
"La malle bouche, elle a raté si traistre
Qu'elle a baisé et vendu nostre maistre."
Charles de la Huetrie,
Contreblason de la Bouche.
Hubert had no desire whatever to think, but it is not given to all persons to be able to regulate cerebral activity and to dismiss the serious affairs until the morrow. Neither the reading of a naturalistic novel, nor meditation upon the most abtruse propositions and scholia of the contemporary thinkers, nor the contemplation of the eternal verities, prevented him from bewailing his recent foolish behavior.
Ah! how well he judged things from a distance, how well he saw what he should have done. No one had to a higher degree his presence of mind at the foot of the staircase.
Immediate analysis was always slightly confused and did not force any precise conclusions. Without doubt, it was always three or four minutes after the occasion had passed that he was able to unravel the thoughts and the mental reservations of his partner, and by the forth minute he already knew what he should have done at the first second, but he never knew it so pertinently as after a night's sleep.
No disturbance of his heart had ever prevented him from sleeping; he thanked heaven for having granted him lucid mornings.
The more he thought, this morning, the more the moving sands of indecision shifted.
Having taken an awkward step, he had seen how pernicious action had proved to him; to wait was sterile: it is like the sower of pebbles who, pausing along the fields in spring, is astonished not to see any germination.