“I did not answer, but began to weep.  My father did not utter a single word.

“Eight days later I entered college.

“Well, my friend, it was all over with me.  I had witnessed the other side of things, the bad side; I have not been able to perceive the good side since that day.  What things have passed in my mind, what strange phenomena has warped my ideas?  I do not know.  But I no longer have a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, nor ambition, nor hope.  And I perceive always my poor mother on the ground, lying in the avenue, while my father is maltreating her.  My mother died a few years after; my father lives still.  I have not seen him since.  Waiter, a ‘bock.’”

A waiter brought him his “bock,” which he swallowed at a gulp.  But, in taking up his pipe again, trembling as he was he broke it.  Then he made a violent gesture: 

“Zounds!  This is indeed a grief, a real grief.  I have had it for a month, and it was coloring so beautifully!”

He darted through the vast saloon, which was now full of smoke and of people drinking, uttering his cry: 

“Waiter, a ’bock’—­and a new pipe.”

REGRET

Monsieur Savel, who was called in Mantes, “Father Savel,” had just risen from bed.  He wept.  It was a dull autumn day; the leaves were falling.  They fell slowly in the rain, resembling another rain, but heavier and slower.  M. Savel was not in good spirit.  He walked from the fireplace to the window, and from the window to the fireplace.  Life has its somber days.  It will no longer have any but somber days for him now, for he has reached the age of sixty-two.  He is alone, an old bachelor, with nobody about him.  How sad it is to die alone, all alone, without the disinterested affection of anyone!

He pondered over his life, so barren, so void.  He recalled the days gone by, the days of his infancy, the house, the house of his parents; his college days, his follies, the time of his probation in Paris, the illness of his father, his death.  He then returned to live with his mother.  They lived together, the young man and the old woman, very quietly, and desired nothing more.  At last the mother died.  How sad a thing is life!  He has lived always alone, and now, in his turn, he, too, will soon be dead.  He will disappear, and that will be the finish.  There will be no more of Savel upon the earth.  What a frightful thing!  Other people will live, they will live, they will laugh.  Yes, people will go on amusing themselves, and he will no longer exist!  Is it not strange that people can laugh, amuse themselves, be joyful under that eternal certainty of death!  If this death were only probable, one could then have hope; but no, it is inevitable, as inevitable as that night follows the day.