Then, by degrees he grew calmer, his mental torture diminished, the image that had appeared to his eyes and which haunted his nights became more indistinct and less frequent.  He began once more to live nearly like everybody else, like all those idle people who drink beer off marble-topped tables and wear out their clothes on the threadbare velvet of the couches.

He grew old amid the smoke from pipes, lost his hair under the gas lights, looked upon his weekly bath, on his fortnightly visit to the barber’s to have his hair cut, and on the purchase of a new coat or hat as an event.  When he got to his cafe in a new hat he would look at himself in the glass for a long time before sitting down, and take it off and put it on again several times, and at last ask his friend, the lady at the bar, who was watching him with interest, whether she thought it suited him.

Two or three times a year he went to the theatre, and in the summer he sometimes spent his evenings at one of the open-air concerts in the Champs Elysees.  And so the years followed each other slow, monotonous, and short, because they were quite uneventful.

He very rarely now thought of the dreadful drama which had wrecked his life; for twenty years had passed since that terrible evening.  But the life he had led since then had worn him out.  The landlord of his cafe would often say to him:  “You ought to pull yourself together a little, Monsieur Parent; you should get some fresh air and go into the country.  I assure you that you have changed very much within the last few months.”  And when his customer had gone out be used to say to the barmaid:  “That poor Monsieur Parent is booked for another world; it is bad never to get out of Paris.  Advise him to go out of town for a day occasionally; he has confidence in you.  Summer will soon be here; that will put him straight.”

And she, full of pity and kindness for such a regular customer, said to Parent every day:  “Come, monsieur, make up your mind to get a little fresh air.  It is so charming in the country when the weather is fine.  Oh, if I could, I would spend my life there!”

By degrees he was seized with a vague desire to go just once and see whether it was really as pleasant there as she said, outside the walls of the great city.  One morning he said to her: 

“Do you know where one can get a good luncheon in the neighborhood of Paris?”

“Go to the Terrace at Saint-Germain; it is delightful there!”

He had been there formerly, just when he became engaged.  He made up his mind to go there again, and he chose a Sunday, for no special reason, but merely because people generally do go out on Sundays, even when they have nothing to do all the week; and so one Sunday morning he went to Saint-Germain.  He felt low-spirited and vexed at having yielded to that new longing, and at having broken through his usual habits.  He was thirsty; he would have liked to get out at every