contrary I like them very much. . . . Invite both of
them. . . . And I'll go and get a box at the Vaudeville."
"No!"
"I implore you!"
Her voice became less harsh, she closed the book.
"Well! We'll see tomorrow."
Really, at that moment I loved Gabrielle, Jesselin, Celestine I even thought I loved Malterre.
I no longer worked. Not that love of work deserted me, but I no longer had the creative faculty in me. I used to sit down at my desk every day, with blank sheets of paper before me, searching for ideas, and failing to find them, I would again relapse into anxieties of the present, which meant Juliette, into dread of the future, which again meant Juliette! . . . Just as a drunkard clutches and turns his empty bottle to get the last drop of liquor out of it, so I searched my brains in the hope of squeezing the least bit of an idea out of it. . . . Alas! My head was empty!
It was empty and weighed upon my shoulders like an enormous ball of lead! . . . My mentality was always slow in getting started: it required stimulation, it had to be lashed with a whip. Because of my illbalanced sensibility, my passive nature, I easily yielded to intellectual or moral influences, whether good or bad. And again, Lirat's friendship was quite useful to me in the past. My own ideas melted in the warmth of his spirit; his conversation opened for me new horizons hitherto unsuspected; whatever confused ideas I had were cleared up, they assumed a more definite form which I endeavored to express; he taught me how to see, to understand things and made me delve with him into the mysteries of life.
Now, the clear horizons toward which I was led shrunk and were shut off before me daily, almost
