If, however, his life had been complete!  If he had done something; if he had had adventures, grand pleasures, successes, satisfaction of some kind or another.  But now, nothing.  He had done nothing, never anything but rise from bed, eat, at the same hours, and go to bed again.  And he has gone on like that, to the age of sixty-two years.  He had not even taken unto himself a wife, as other men do.  Why?  Yes, why was it that he was not married?  He might have been, for he possessed considerable means.  Was it an opportunity which had failed him?  Perhaps!  But one can create opportunities.  He was indifferent; that was all.  Indifference had been his greatest drawback, his defect, his vice.  Have some men missed their lives through indifference!  To certain natures, it is so difficult for them to get out of bed, to move about, to take long walks, to speak, to study any question.

He had not even been in love.  No woman had reposed on his bosom, in a complete abandon of love.  He knew nothing of this delicious anguish of expectation, of the divine quivering of the pressed hand, of the ecstacy of triumphant passion.

What superhuman happiness must inundate your heart, when lips encounter lips for the first time, when the grasp of four arms makes one being of you, a being unutterably happy, two beings infatuated with one another.

M. Savel was sitting down, his feet on the fender, in his dressing gown.  Assuredly his life had been spoiled, completely spoiled.  He had, however, loved.  He had loved secretly, dolorously and indifferently, just as was characteristic of him in everything.  Yes, he had loved his old friend, Madame Saudres, the wife of his old companion, Saudres.  Ah! if he had known her as a young girl!  But he had encountered her too late; she was already married.  Unquestionably he would have asked her hand; that he would!  How he had loved her, nevertheless, without respite, since the first day he had set eyes on her!

He recalled, without emotion, all the times he had seen her, his grief on leaving her, the many nights that he could not sleep, because of his thinking of her.

In the mornings he always got up somewhat less amorous than in the evening.

Why?

Seeing that she was formerly pretty, and “crumy,” blonde, curl, joyous.  Saudres was not the man she would have selected.  She was now fifty-two years of age.  She seemed happy.  Ah! if she had only loved him in days gone by; yes, if she had only loved him!  And why should she not have loved him, he, Savel, seeing that he loved her so much, yes, she, Madame Saudres!

If only she could have divined something—­Had she not divined anything, had she not seen anything, never comprehended anything?  But!  Then what would she have thought?  If he had spoken what would she have answered?

And Savel asked himself a thousand other things.  He reviewed his whole life, seeking to grasp again a multitude of details.