“You certainly look older than your age.  You surely must have experienced some great sorrow.”

He replied: 

“I tell you that I have not.  I am old because I never go out into the air.  Nothing makes a man deteriorate more than the life of a cafe.”

I still could not believe him.

“You must surely also have been married?  One could not get as bald-headed as you are without having been in love.”

He shook his head, shaking dandruff down on his coat as he did so.

“No, I have always been virtuous.”

And, raising his eyes toward the chandelier which heated our heads, he said: 

“If I am bald, it is the fault of the gas.  It destroys the hair.  Waiter, a ‘bock.’  Are you not thirsty?”

“No, thank you.  But you really interest me.  Since when have you been so morbid?  Your life is not normal, it is not natural.  There is something beneath it all.”

“Yes, and it dates from my infancy.  I received a great shock when I was very young, and that turned my life into darkness which will last to the end.”

“What was it?”

“You wish to know about it?  Well, then, listen.  You recall, of course, the castle in which I was brought up, for you used to spend five or six months there during vacation.  You remember that large gray building, in the middle of a great park, and the long avenues of oaks which opened to the four points of the compass.  You remember my father and mother, both of whom were ceremonious, solemn, and severe.

“I worshipped my mother; I was afraid of my father; but I respected both, accustomed always as I was to see every one bow before them.  They were Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse to all the country round, and our neighbors, the Tannemares, the Ravelets, the Brennevilles, showed them the utmost consideration.

“I was then thirteen years old.  I was happy, pleased with everything, as one is at that age, full of the joy of life.

“Well, toward the end of September, a few days before returning to college, as I was playing about in the shrubbery of the park, among the branches and leaves, as I was crossing a path, I saw my father and mother, who were walking along.

“I recall it as though it were yesterday.  It was a very windy day.  The whole line of trees swayed beneath the gusts of wind, groaning, and seeming to utter cries-those dull, deep cries that forests give out during a tempest.

“The falling leaves, turning yellow, flew away like birds, circling and falling, and then running along the path like swift animals.

“Evening came on.  It was dark in the thickets.  The motion of the wind and of the branches excited me, made me tear about as if I were crazy, and howl in imitation of the wolves.

“As soon as I perceived my parents, I crept furtively toward them, under the branches, in order to surprise them, as though I had been a veritable prowler.  But I stopped in fear a few paces from them.  My father, who was in a terrible passion, cried: