"My dear Oury, your psychology is really interesting. 'I wait until the others leave!' Your device is the very device of humanity. It is admirable, it is the scheme of life. You are a man, Oury, you are the man, you are symbolic."
"Perhaps, but I do not get any vanity from the fact. Yet my existence is singular and I imagine that few creatures will have lived whole days so destitute of incidents. Sit down and we will talk; I really can sacrifice an hour or two to an old friend."
Entragues willingly consented.
"You thought that I was in the provinces?" commenced Oury. "I am a man who has disappeared, but not a provincial. Do you see that gray-haired, very amiable man down there, at the desk. I bow to him, he smiles and offers me a little paper which I take. I also smile, for this paper which is used to ask for a book is useless to me. I do not come here to work, but to watch others work.
"I spend five or six agreeable hours here.
"It is quite different at home in the morning. Time creeps like a serpent, writhes, yawns, bites me, instills me with the cataleptic venom of boredom.
"I sometimes open my window in fine weather and gaze upon the distant trees; other mornings I read Ronsard. Time goes! time goes! No, it lies heavy, useless and tenacious.
"I had two or three months of respite, several years ago.
Paint me, Janet, the beauties of my darling.
"I set out in quest of this visionary portrait. Why had Thomas de Leu not engraved it? He is without an equal in frilling a starched collar, in lengthening ferociously the face of a leaguer, but delicately that of a princess. As this picture does not exist, and I knew it did not exist, I sought it perseveringly, for I was at least sure of never touching the final disillusion with my finger.