The Inferno

, after a short speech impressing upon me all the materi

f the room in which I was going to live for a wh

o narrow-backed armchairs with smeary upholstery, a table with a piece of green felt set i

was-that bed of imitation mahogany, that frigid toilet table, that inevit

window-a path trodden by a host of feet from day to day. The moulding, which I could reach with my hands, was out of line a

er that had been touched oftenest had become smudgy-the edge of the door, the paint around the lock of the closet and the wall alongside t

ther man, just as that evening

.

. Hurry, formalities, baggage, the

chairs. Everything became

had found a situation here in a bank. My days were to change. It was because of t

event was now insignificant. I was unmarried. I had no children and shall have none. There are moments when

d spiritual illuminations, mystical emotions, a morbid fondness for shutting myself up face to face with my past. I had attributed exceptional importan

.

as now in

ir to be nearer the glass, an

times when I let myself go); quite correctly dressed; not

re green, though, oddly enough, p

nce of God, if not in the dogmas of religion. However, I thought, these last

ey are absolutely useless. You cannot demonstr

ted an indelicacy, even if certain of impunity. I would

re like me, al

.

the looking-glass. In the setting of the room that the twilight began to invade, I saw the outline of my foreh

solitude and made me look larger, and then something else, I knew not what, made me

Josette. We had met long before, in the rear of the millinery shop in which she worked at Tours. She had smiled at me wit

here are moments when I still desire her as madly as the first time. This is so esp

e days when we shall see each other again be

ay. Had I ever thought of it? I reflected. No, I had never thought of it. I could not. You

ht will come, until the last

od on my feet, reeling, my heart th

groom of a rich family, standing near the bar of a tavern, with cheeks puffed out,

ught up in the country, and as a child I used to hear that blast far in the distance, along the road to

ly my hand wave

elf! I thought of all this suddenly,

.

. Ah, because the refrain recalled the past, it seemed to me as if it were all ov

be neither happy nor unhappy. I could not rise from the dead. I would grow old quietly, as quiet as I was

No, it is open to the four winds of heaven. It is lost amid a host of similar rooms, like the lig

th deep orbits, buried in the twilight, and my mouth filled

pped wing. I wished that something part

art to bestow. I had nothing and I deserved nothin

with whom I had hitherto lost all my time, a woman whose features I did not see

variety into my life. Luxurious, bustling departures surrounded by solicitous inferiors, a lazy leaning back in rai

hen strange, exotic faces in the sunlight, puzzlingly alike, and monuments, fam

where everybody comes and everybody goes. And yet I longed for glory! For glory bound to me like a miraculous wound that I should feel and ev

ith those boundless fancies. There was nothing more for me to expect from

ers making them look like something torn. I lifted my face up to the sky. I sank back and leaned on the bed, a huge object with a vague human shape, like a corpse. God, I was lost! I prayed to Him to have pi