“So I am,” said Clerambault with his beaming smile; his own boy was in his mind.  He closed the door, and stood for some minutes with the lamp in his hand in the vestibule before he realised where he was.  It was nearly midnight and he was very tired, but, instead of going into the bedroom, he mechanically turned again towards his study;—­the apartment, the house, the street were all asleep.  Almost without seeing it, he stared vaguely at the light shining on the frame of an engraving of Rembrandt’s, The Resurrection of Lazarus, which hung on the opposite wall....  A dear figure seemed to enter the room; ... it came in silently, and stood beside him.

“Are you satisfied now?” he thought.  “Is this what you wished?” And Maxime answered:  “Yes,” then added with meaning: 

“I have found it very hard to teach you, Papa.”

“Yes,” said Clerambault, “there is much that we can learn from our sons.”  And they smiled at each other in the silence.

When Clerambault at last went to bed, his wife was sound asleep.  She was one of those people whom nothing can keep awake, who sink into profound slumber as soon as their heads touch the pillow.  But Clerambault could not follow her example; he lay on his back with his eyes open, staring into the darkness, all through the rest of the night.

There were pale glimmers from the street in the half-shadow; and a quiet star or two high up in a dark sky; one seemed to be falling in a great half-circle—­it was only an airplane keeping watch over the sleeping city.  Clerambault followed its sweep with his eyes, and seemed, to fly with it, the distant hum of the human planet coming faintly to his ear, like a strange music of the spheres not foreseen by Ionian sages.

He felt happy, for the burden was lifted from his body and soul, his whole being seemed to be relaxed, to float in air.  Pictures of the past day with its agitations and fatigues, passed before his eyes, but did not disturb him.  An old man hustled by a mob of young bourgeois ...  He could hear their loud voices, too loud—­but now they had vanished like faces that you catch a glimpse of from a moving train.  The train flies on and the vision disappears in the roaring tunnel....  There is the sombre sky again, and the mysterious star, still falling.  Silent spaces around, the clear darkness, and the cool fresh air blowing on his soul; all infinity in one tiny drop of life, in a heart whose spark flickers to its end, but knows it is free, and that its vast home is near.

Like a good steward of the treasure placed in his charge, Clerambault made up the account of his day.  He looked back on his attempts, his efforts, his impulses, his mistakes; how little remained of his life, for nearly all that he had built up he had afterwards destroyed with his own hands.  He had first stated, then denied, and had never ceased to wander in the forest of doubts and contradictions; often torn and bruised, with no guide but the stars half-seen through the branches.  What meaning had there been in this long troubled course, now ending in darkness?  One only, he had been free.