I went up to him, therefore, with the half-bored face of an author interrupted in one of those moments of sorest self-mistrust, while I found him so pale and haggard that the first words I addressed to him were these:
“What is the matter? What has happened to you?”
“Oh! Let me take breath,” said he. “I’m going to tell you all about it, besides, it’s a dream perhaps, or perhaps I am mad.”
He threw himself into an armchair, and let his head drop between his hands.
I looked at him in astonishment; his hair was dripping with rain; his shoes, his knees, and the bottom of his trousers were covered with mud. I went to the window; I saw at the door his servant and his cabriolet; I could make nothing out of it all.
He saw my surprise.
“I have been to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise,” said he.
“At ten o’clock in the morning?”
“I was there at seven—cursed bal masqué!”
I could not imagine what a bal masqué and Père-Lachaise had to do with one another. I resigned myself, and turning my back to the mantelpiece began to roll a cigarette for him between my fingers with the phlegm and the patience of a Spaniard.