Why seek to purchase a prolongation of life? Would one be warranted in begging for the wherewithal to tarry among stalls heaped with fruits, streets running over with traffic, gardens filled with children, young and grown-up? Besides, could one cheat fate with money? Into his head came the ominous air from Carmen he had hummed one night more than ten years ago: "Si tu dois mourir, recommence vingt fois; la carte impitoyable répètera la mort."
He wandered along the quays, nodding to booksellers of his acquaintance, and at the Gare d'Orsay turned into a street leading to the closely guarded house of M. de Reisenach, where he was due at five o'clock.
The old man greeted him with the customary show of hospitality. Paul bowed as usual to the empty arm-chair, exchanged the usual remarks about the weather, sat at a tiny table laid for three and drank tea poured out by a servant, since "Madame" had "an aversion to presiding over her table." This explanation was invariably repeated.
Paul had forgotten whatever horror he had first experienced on hearing of the crime committed so long ago, and felt strangely in sympathy with the motives that urged M. de Reisenach to persist in his realization of a wildly extravagant ideal. Paul entered into the madman's psychology and played his part in the other's life-long drama with a facility that gave him cause to question his own balance. The measure of his sanity, he concluded, was merely the measure of his failure to realize his chimères. Paul recalled a sentence of a favourite writer: "Cette forme est réelle, puisqu' elle est apparente et qu'il n'y a de réalité au monde que les apparences." M. de Reisenach's visions were real to him. He was to be envied.
Paul's long walk had fatigued him. The strong tea made his cheeks burn. He felt his body frail against
