"I have some wool stockings and caps; that's what
you need. Go!"
He hurried me away. Without seeing anything, without realizing anything, I went through the apartment, bumping into pieces of furniture. I did not feel any pain, for I was insensible to everything; I was walking behind Lirat with the heavy step and the passive gait of a beast led to slaughter.
"Well where is your hat?"
"That's right! I went out without a hat. I did not think that I was abandoning, that I was leaving behind anything that was a part of me; that the things which I saw, in the midst of which I lived, were dying one after another as soon as I passed by them. "
The train left at eight o'clock in the evening. Lirat did not leave me all day. Wishing, no doubt, to occupy my mind and to keep my will power at its highest pitch, he spoke to me with broad gestures; but I did not hear anything except a confused noise, annoying me and buzzing about my ears like pestering flies. We dined in a restaurant near the Mont Parnasse railroad station. Lirat continued to talk, stupefying me with gestures and words, tracing strange geographic lines with his knife on the table.
"Look, there's where it is! Then you will follow this side. . . and. . ."
I believe he was giving me instructions about my trip to the place of exile I was bound for. . . told me the names of villages, persons. The word 'sea' recurred again and again with the rumble of pebbles washed by the waves and rubbing against one another.
"Will you remember?"
And without knowing exactly what he referred to, I answered:
"Yes, yes, I'll remember."
It was only at the station, this vast building, filled
