The man entered almost immediately—a big
soldier with red moustache, a malignant look, and
a cunning eye.
The colonel looked him straight in the face.
“You are going to tell me the name of my wife’s
lover.”
“But, my colonel—”
The officer snatched his revolver out of the half-open
drawer.
“Come! quick! You know I do not jest!”
“Well—my colonel—it is
Captain Saint-Albert.”
Scarcely had he pronounced this name when a flame
flashed between his eyes, and he fell on his face,
his forehead pierced by a ball.
While descending the wide staircase of the club heated
like a conservatory by the stove the Baron de Mordiane
had left his fur-coat open; therefore, when the huge
street-door closed behind him he felt a shiver of
intense cold run through him, one of those sudden and
painful shivers which make us feel sad, as if we were
stricken with grief. Moreover, he had lost some
money, and his stomach for some time past had troubled
him, no longer permitting him to eat as he liked.
He went back to his own residence; and, all of a sudden,
the thought of his great, empty apartment, of his
footman asleep in the ante-chamber, of the dressing-room
in which the water kept tepid for the evening toilet
simmered pleasantly under the chafing-dish heated by
gas, and the bed, spacious, antique, and solemn-looking,
like a mortuary couch, caused another chill, more
mournful still than that of the icy atmosphere, to
penetrate to the bottom of his heart, the inmost core
of his flesh.
For some years past he had felt weighing down on him
that load of solitude which sometimes crushes old
bachelors. Formerly, he had been strong, lively,
and gay, giving all his days to sport and all his nights
to festive gatherings. Now, he had grown dull,
and no longer took pleasure in anything. Exercise
fatigued him; suppers and even dinners made him ill;
women annoyed him as much as they had formerly amused
him.
The monotony of evenings all like each other, of the
same friends met again in the same place, at the club,
of the same game with a good hand and a run of luck,
of the same talk on the same topics, of the same witty
remarks by the same lips, of the same jokes on the
same themes, of the same scandals about the same women,
disgusted him so much as to make him feel at times
a veritable inclination to commit suicide. He
could no longer lead this life regular and inane,
so commonplace, so frivolous and so dull at the same
time, and he felt a longing for something tranquil,
restful, comfortable, without knowing what.
