Feeling himself innocent, he yielded. There was no complaint—the irreproachable does not reproach.
His rough expulsion drew from him no sign; he suffered a sort of internal stiffening. The child did not bow under this sudden blow of fate, which seemed to put an end to his existence ere it had well begun; he received the thunderstroke standing.
It would have been evident to any one who could have seen his astonishment unmixed with dejection, that in the group which abandoned him there was nothing which loved him, nothing which he loved.
Brooding, he forgot the cold. Suddenly the wave wetted his feet—the tide was flowing; a gust passed through his hair—the north wind was rising. He shivered. There came over him, from head to foot, the shudder of awakening.
He cast his eyes about him.
He was alone.
Up to this day there had never existed for him any other men than those who were now in the hooker. Those men had just stolen away.
Let us add what seems a strange thing to state. Those men, the only ones he knew, were unknown to him.
He could not have said who they were. His childhood had been passed among them, without his having the consciousness of being of them. He was in juxtaposition to them, nothing more.
He had just been—forgotten—by them.