As I walked out of his office into the fresh, sparkling, morning sunlight, life to me had a very bitter savour. I walked through the streets till I felt tired in every muscle. Then I sat thinking on a bench in a green corner of the Champs Elysees, watching absently the sun patches jump from leaf to neighbouring leaf as the wind elevated and depressed them, and trying to mentally seize upon and analyse this vile, low impulse of another man's envy.
It was dark when I came back to the hotel. When I came up to my room I was surprised to see quite a little crowd of figures clustered round my door, all talking at once in their shrill French tones, all gesticulating at each other as if about to tear off each other's scalps.
Angry exclamations reached me as I came towards them.
"Mais je vous dis, je ne savais pas!"
"Mais c'est impossible!"
"Pas en regie!"
"Que voulez vous? C'est un barbare!"
Then as I came up there was a general cry of "Le voila! le voila!" and in an instant they were all around me, all clamouring, screaming, questioning me at once. The master of the hotel in the greatest agitation, the manager in his shirt sleeves, two or three waiters, a man looking like a gendarme, and another official with a paper in his hand. For a second they shouted so—nothing could be distinguished except broken phrases and the continual repetition of the words "Notification" and "M'sieur le Commissionaire."
"A vous la responsibilite!"
"Moi? je n'en savais rien!"