"Come now, be frank. You have been the victim of some great sorrow; despair in love, no doubt! It is easy to see that you are a man whom misfortune has hit hard. What age are you?""I am thirty years of age, but I look to be forty-five at least."I looked him straight in the face. His shrunken figure, badly cared for, gave one the impression that he was an old man. On the summit of his cranium, a few long hairs shot straight up from a skin of doubtful cleanness. He had enormous eyelashes, a large mustache, and a thick beard. Suddenly I had a kind of vision, Iknow not why--the vision of a basin filled with noisome water, the water which should have been applied to that poll. I said to him:
"Verily, you look to be more than that age. Of a certainty you must have experienced some great disappointment."He replied:
"I tell you that I have not. I am old because I never take air.
There is nothing that vitiates the life of a man more than the atmosphere of a cafe." I could not believe him.
"You must surely have been married as well? One could not get as baldheaded as you are without having been much in love."He shook his head, sending down his back little hairs from the scalp:
"No, I have always been virtuous."
And raising his eyes toward the luster, which beat down on our heads, he said:
"If I am baldheaded, it is the fault of the gas. It is the enemy of hair. Waiter, a 'bock.' You must be thirsty also?""No, thank you. But you certainly interest me. When did you have your first discouragement? Your life is not normal, is not natural. There is something under it all.""Yes, and it dates from my infancy. I received a heavy blow when I was very young. It turned my life into darkness, which will last to the end.""How did it come about?"
"You wish to know about it? Well, then, listen. You recall, of course, the castle in which I was brought up, seeing that you used to visit it for five or six months during the vacations? You remember that large, gray building in the middle of a great park, and the long avenues of oaks, which opened toward the four cardinal points! You remember my father and my mother, both of whom were ceremonious, solemn, and severe.
"I worshiped my mother; I was suspicious of my father; but Irespected both, accustomed always as I was to see everyone bow before them. In the country, they were Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse; and our neighbors, the Tannemares, the Ravelets, the Brennevilles, showed the utmost consideration for them.
"I was then thirteen years old, happy, satisfied with everything, as one is at that age, and full of joy and vivacity.
"Now toward the end of September, a few days before entering the Lycee, while I was enjoying myself in the mazes of the park, climbing the trees and swinging on the branches, I saw crossing an avenue my father and mother, who were walking together.
"I recall the thing as though it were yesterday. It was a very windy day. The whole line of trees bent under the pressure of the wind, moaned and seemed to utter cries--cries dull, yet deep--so that the whole forest groaned under the gale.
"Evening had come on, and it was dark in the thickets. The agitation of the wind and the branches excited me, made me skip about like an idiot, and howl in imitation of the wolves.
