“You are very fortunate in living here.”

“I came here quite by accident,” he replied.

“By accident?”

“Yes, accident and unhappiness brought me here.”

“You have been unhappy?”

“Very unhappy.”

He was standing in front of me, wrapped in his bournoose, and his voice had such a painful ring in it that it almost made me shiver; after a moment’s silence, he continued: 

“I will tell you what my troubles have been; perhaps it will do me good to speak about them.”

“Let me hear them.”

“Do you really wish it?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, then.  You remember what I was at school; a sort of poet, brought up in a chemist’s shop.  I dreamt of writing books, and I tried it, after taking my degree, but I did not succeed.  I published a volume of verse, and then a novel, and neither of them sold, and then I wrote a play, which was never acted.”

“Next, I lost my heart, but I will not give you an account of my passion.  Next door to my father’s shop, there was a tailor’s, who had a daughter, with whom I fell in love.  She was very clever, and had obtained her certificates for higher education, and her mind was bright and active, quite in keeping indeed with her body.  She might have been taken for fifteen, although she was two-and-twenty.  She was very small, with delicate features, outlines and tints, just like some beautiful water color.  Her nose, her mouth, her blue eyes, her light hair, her smile, her waist, her hands, all looked as if they were fit for a stained window, and not for everyday life, but she was lively, supple, and incredibly active, and I was very much in love with her.  I remember two or three walks in the Luxembourg Garden, near the Medices fountain, which were certainly the happiest hours of my life.  I dare say you have known that foolish condition of tender madness, which causes us to think of nothing but of acts of adoration!  One really becomes possessed, haunted by a woman, and nothing exists for us, by the side of her.

“We soon became engaged, and I told her my projects of the future, which she did not approve of.  She did not believe that I was either a poet, a novelist, or a dramatic author, and thought a prosperous business could afford perfect happiness.  So I gave up the idea of writing books, and resigned myself to selling them, and I bought a bookseller’s business at Marseilles, the owner of which had just died.

“I had three very prosperous years.  We had made our shop into a sort of literary drawing-room, where all the men of letters in the town used to come and talk.  They came in, as if it had been a club, and exchanged ideas on books, on poets, and especially on politics.  My wife, who took a very active part in the business, enjoyed quite a reputation in the town, but, as for me, while they were all talking downstairs, I was working in my studio upstairs, which communicated with the shop by a winding staircase.  I could hear their voices, their laughter, and their discussions, and sometimes I left off writing in order to listen.  I kept in my own room to write a novel—­which I never finished.