He felt that if he were to remain there any longer, he should lose his head, and so he made haste to get to the Pavillon Henri IV for lunch, to try and forget his troubles under the influence of wine and alcohol, and at any rate to have someone to speak to.

He took a small table in one of the arbors, from which one can see all the surrounding country, ordered his lunch and asked to be served at once.  Then some more people arrived and sat down at tables near him and he felt more comfortable; he was no longer alone.  Three persons were lunching near him, and he had looked at them two or three times without seeing them clearly, as one looks at total strangers, but suddenly a woman’s voice sent a shiver through him, which seemed to penetrate to his very marrow.  “George,” it had said, “will you carve the chicken?” And another replied:  “Yes, Mamma.”

Parent looked up, and he understood, he guessed immediately who those people were!  He should certainly not have known them again.  His wife had grown quite white and very stout, an old, serious, respectable lady, and she held her head forwards as she ate, for fear of spotting her dress, although she had a table napkin tucked under her chin.  George had become a man; he had a slight beard, that unequal and almost colorless beard which becurls the cheeks of youths.  He wore a high hat, a white waistcoat and a single eyeglass, because it looked dandified, no doubt.  Parent looked at him in astonishment!  Was that George, his son?  No, he did not know that young man; there could be nothing in common between them.  Limousin had his back to him, and was eating, with his shoulders rather bent.

Well, all three of them seemed happy and satisfied; they came and dined in the country, at well-known restaurants.  They had had a calm and pleasant existence, a family existence in a warm and comfortable house, filled with all those trifles which make life agreeable, with affection, with all those tender words which people exchange continually when they love each other.  They had lived thus, thanks to him, Parent, on his money, after having deceived him, robbed him, ruined him!  They had condemned him, the innocent, the simple-minded, the jovial man to all the miseries of solitude, to that abominable life which he had led between the pavement and the counter, every moral torture and every physical misery!  They had made him a useless being, who was lost and wretched amongst other people, a poor old man without any pleasures, or anything to look forward to, and who hoped for nothing from anyone.  For him, the world was empty, because he loved nothing in the world.  He might go among other nations or go about the streets, go into all the houses in Paris, open every room, but he would not find the beloved face, the face of wife or child, that he was in search of, and which smiles when it sees you, behind any door.  And that idea worked upon him more than any other, the idea of a door which one opens, to see and to embrace somebody behind it.