At the same he felt that his brain was confused and that he was gradually losing the exact idea of things.  The wine he had drunk was more than he was accustomed to; it was rising to his head and he was becoming intoxicated.

—­Well, said Ridoux, you give me no answer and you stare at me like an earthen-ware dog.

—­What answer do you wish me to give you? except that I believe I am dreaming; in truth, I believe I am dreaming.

—­Be more sincere.  I do not like hypocrisy.

—­You talk of a giddy little thing; I know no giddy thing.  As to the rest, I have not quite made out what it is you wanted to tell me.  I think that you have intended to make a joke about your old women.

—­Ah, you, you never understand anything.  Where did you come from?

—­Why, from your school, from the seminary, and neither you nor my masters taught me that there.

—­To me! to me! to me! you speak in such a manner to me?  Oh clever fox! Alopex, alopex.  Well, you are sharper than I am, cried the old Cure, striking the table and looking at Marcel with astonishment mingled with admiration.  Why should I concern myself about your future?  You will succeed, my dear fellow, you will succeed.  Oh, oh, you are a master.  A gray-beard like I cannot teach you anything.  Jesus, Mary, Joseph!  That is my nephew!  My dear old Ridoux, Cure of St. Nicholas, allow me to congratulate you.  Monsieur le Cure of Althausen, I swear you will become a bishop.  Monseigneur, I drink your health!

LXVII.

IN A GLASS.

“The fumes of the wine were working in my veins; it was one of those moments of intoxication when everything one sees, everything one hears, speaks to us of the beloved.”

  A. DE MUSSET (Confession d’un enfant du Siecle).

They conversed for a long time still, and they drank too, so much so that Marcel went to his room with his brain charged with the fumes of the wine.  He opened his window and breathed with delight the fresh air of night.  While he gazed on the stars which were rising slowly in the sky, he tried to analyze the new sensation which he experienced.  “How a few mouthfuls of liquor alter a man,” he said to himself.

He felt himself to be totally different, and he allowed his thoughts to wander in an ocean of delights.  His ardent and ecstatic imagination launched itself into space.  Bright unknown worlds rose before him with their atmosphere saturated with warmth, with caresses, and with perfumes.  He saw the future, and it appeared to him radiant.  There were sons without number and feasts without end; the entire universe belonged to him.  He flew from planet to planet without effort or fatigue, borne by a mysterious wing into the fields of the Infinite.